Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Fired

Augustus Saint-Gaudens 
at his cameo lathe

"It was during the opening two or three years of my apprenticeship to Avet that my earliest definite aspirations and ambitions had made themselves felt. For I applied for admission to the drawing school of the Cooper Institute. There every evening, upon my return from work at six o'clock and my hasty tea I went. And there my artistic education began. The feeling of profound gratitude for the help which I have had from that school abides with me to this day. 

With such an incentive I became a terrific worker, toiling every night until eleven o'clock after the class was over, in the conviction that in me another heaven-born genius had been given to the world. Indeed I became so exhausted with the confining work of cameo-cutting by day and drawing at night that, in the morning, mother literally dragged me out of bed, pushed me over to the washstand, where I gave myself a cat's lick somehow or other, drove me to the seat at the table, administered my breakfast, which consisted of tea and large quantities of long French loaves of bread with butter, and tumbled me down stairs out into the street, where I awoke.

My appreciation of the antique [plaster casts] and my earliest attempt to draw from the nude came at the Institute with the advice of Mr. Huntington and Mr. Leutze, the latter being the painter of the popular 'Washington Crossing the Delaware.' Two other lasting aesthetic impressions of the time I received upon seeing Ward's 'Indian Hunter' in plaster in the back of some picture store on Broadway, and Gérome's painting of 'The Death of Caesar,' exhibited in the window of Goupil's, then on the northeast corner of Tenth Street and Broadway.

I have spoken before of Avet's scoldings. At last one day, on coming into the shop in an exceptionally violent state of anger, he suddenly discharged me because I had forgotten to sweep up the crumbs I had dropped on the floor while lunching. I took off my overalls, wrapped them up, went to father's store, and explained the story to my parents, feeling that the end of the world had arrived. Within half an hour Avet appeared. I was sent on some errand, and on returning was told that he wanted me back at an advance of five dollars a week on my wages. However I replied that I would not return under any condition. This was no doubt the most heroic act of my existence. Nevertheless the incident, as will appear, opened the second by-road in my career which led to my being a sculptor."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his son Homer Saint-Gaudens.)