Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Convalescing

Saint-Gaudens' "Little Studio" sits on the grounds of
his Cornish, New Hampshire home, Aspet.

"I was but a day in New York [after arriving from Paris], and a day in Boston before entering the hospital. The note which struck me in the people, and a distinctive note at that, was that the general look of the faces was one of keenness and kindness. There is enough misery in the world without adding to it by a tale of my experiences in the hospital. Gratitude for the great kindness I experienced there and to the men of medicine I was under, only added to my admiration for the generosity of that profession. 

In due time I left, and with Mrs. Saint-Gaudens was driven to the Fitchburg station to take the train for Windsor. We occupied a stateroom, I lying on a couch and she sitting opposite me. The day and the scenery were beautiful, and as we traveled I looked forward with pleasant anticipation to seeing Cornish again after a three-years' absence. Suddenly a series of repeated locomotive whistles, and the putting on of the brakes with violence, revealed something wrong. I was not mistaken. In another moment there was a tremendous crash. Great splinters of cars flew past the window. I was thrown forward on the floor, the children began to scream unmercifully and we were enveloped in a cloud of dust and smoke.

Presently we got out of the car and found ourselves in a beautiful winding gorge, a peaceful brook purling along, the birds singing, a delightful breeze blowing, and the white clouds flying gaily across the blue sky. As we looked forward, we could see what had been our locomotive, a confused mass of wreckage, wood, and twisted iron. On the other side from where I was, they told me that the engineer lay under the locomotive, his legs pinned down by the wheels. He died in the night.

The rest of the story until my arrival in Windsor the following day, is one of unpleasant experiences with the underlings and the railroad employees, who treated us with no more consideration that they would have given a car full of horses - probably less.

Then, through the delightful New Hampshire autumn, followed the pleasure of convalescence, combined with further work upon the statue of General Sherman. For while the principal bronze casting was being made in Paris, I was carrying out alterations later sent to the founders; with the wings which did not please me, with parts of the cloak of the General, with the mane of the horse, and the pine branch on the base, which I placed there to typify Georgia."

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Critiques

A.P. Proctor standing with his
Theodore Roosevelt sculpture

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "A number of young men made themselves known in the last five years of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, men such as A.P. Proctor, James E. Fraser, H.A. MacNeill, Adolph Weinman and Albert Jaegers. At the date of my father's death his interest in them was probably as vital as in any other members of his craft, because in them, he believed, lay the immediate future of American sculpture. Here are three letters he wrote concerning them. [They also speak to us of those qualities in art he admired.]

The first he sent to his brother, Louis Saint-Gaudens, concerning the latter's figures for the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in Washington: 'I wrote a line or two on your ensemble drawing the other day, but as I was feeling miserably I said as little as possible and failed to tell you how well the thing looked as a whole, how the figures carried together harmoniously and yet were diversified... There is no doubt that the work cannot be too direct, that large simple lines and planes with strong dark shadows are the essentials.'

The next letter was to Mr. A.P. Proctor, for a long time my father's assistant: 'I return to you today the sketch of the lion... I think it is excellent as all your work is. I only feel that for architectural work it should be more in planes, more formal... You will forgive me for speaking just as frankly as I always have about your work, and as I wish people to do with me. I think you have not insisted enough on the nobility and force and power of the mane of the lion...The head does not bear the importance to the rest of the body - the overpowering importance that one generally feels with a lion...'

In the following letter my father speaks of Mr. Albert Jaegers, a younger sculptor in whom he took an unusually deep interest: 'I may have been prejudiced in the character of Jaeger's work but it appealed to me in a singular way and it really taught me a lesson in my own work. I certainly wish that I could have done that figure in its dignity, directness, and simplicity. I think also that the poetry of the groups on the side is very fine.'

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Time to Return

"The Children of Jacob H. Schiff"
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens summarized his father's time abroad by saying: "His three-year sojourn in Europe had been made chiefly that he might compare his work with what was being created on the other side of the Atlantic. The trip, however, was valuable to him not only for this, but as well because, on his return, he found himself able to look upon American art with a fresh eye and to see therein qualities which would compare honorably with those of any other art then being created in any land."

Augustus Saint-Gaudens wrote: "This Paris experience, as far as my art goes, has been a great thing for me. I never felt sure of myself before, I groped ahead. All blindness seems to have been washed away. I see my place clearly now; I know, or think I know, just where I stand. A great self-confidence has come over me, and a tremendous desire and will to achieve high things, with a confidence that I shall, has taken possession of me.

I exhibited at the Champ-de-Mars and the papers have spoken well, and it seems as if I were having what they call a 'success' here. I send you some of the extracts from several of the principal artistic papers here... Four of these have asked permission to reproduce my work..."

"But coming here has been a wonderful experience, surprising in many respects, one of them being to find how much of an American I am. I always thought I was a kind of a cosmopolitan, gelatinous fish that belonged here, there, and anywhere. 'Pas du tout, [not at all]," I belong in America, that is my home, that is where I want to be and to remain, with the Elevated Road dropping oil and ashes on the idiot below, the cable cars, the telegraph poles, the skyline, and all that have become dear to me; to say nothing of attractive friends, the scenery, the smell of the earth - the peculiar smell of America, just as peculiar as the smell of Italy or France - and the days like today." It was time to return to Cornish.

To be continued

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

 

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Paul Dubois

"Jeanne d'Arc" by Paul Dubois

"Among the other men of my acquaintance at that time there stand out most vividly Paul Dubois and Auguste Rodin. Paul Dubois held a higher place in my esteem than any of the others, for his 'Joan of Arc' is, to my thinking, one of the greatest statues in the world. I know of but one or two that I would rank higher. For elevation, distinction, and nervousness of style it is extraordinary. It is one of the works that makes a man wish to strive higher and higher, and to criticize his own results to a degree which would not be possible if Dubois and his productions did not exist.

Though a man of rather austere countenance, Dubois had a kindliness underneath, and the 'young eye' which a French friend of mine said was the distinctive quality of an artist's face. I came in personal contact with him only between 1898 and 1900, when I saw him at his studio, and he was good enough to invite me to dine at his house. He was amiability and kindness itself, and that is saying a great deal when one considers the continued and constant calls that were made on him by young men, his admirers. 

At that time he had begun his sketch for a great monument to the Franco-Prussian War. His work meant the modeling of many figures, and, although seventy-two years old, he said to me, 'You see, I expect to live forever.' He had the groups set up in his studio, and I was particularly taken by the kindness with which he asked me if I would really tell him what I thought of his sculpture.

I remember the time when he told me with amused irony of his experiences with the Committee concerning the statue of Joan of Arc. This had cost him, outside of what he had received, thirty thousand, or fifty thousand francs, I forget which, probably the latter, yet the Committee acted with him as if he had been trying to deceive them. This is a common experience, but to think that it occurred with him, and that, despite all his labor and toil and the extraordinary beauty of his creation, he should submit to experiences of that kind, shows us how we are all, big and little, in the same box."

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Reminiscences of Whistler

"Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2: 
Portrait of Thomas Carlyle" by Whistler

"Not long after my arrival in Paris, MacMonnies, who was quite intimate with Whistler, brought us together. So from that day, more and more frequently as time went on, Whistler would come to my studio at dusk on his way home from work. And in my studio he would sit and chat in his extraordinary, witty fashion. He was certainly a remarkable man. If he liked you at all, he would take you at once into his confidence in a most attractive manner, telling his adventures and stories with a verve and wit that are indescribable. 

At times, he, MacMonnies, and I, and occasionally an old French friend of Whistler's student days, dined at Foyot's, opposite the Luxembourg; and a dull moment was impossible with his extraordinary character descriptions of people and his biting irony. We formed a strange, lantern-jawed trio, he, MacMonnies, and I; he dark, MacMonnies blonde and curly, and I red, where time had left the original color. 

He was small, but lithe and thin and active. His studio, at the top of a long flight of stairs, was very high; and his paintings, which were numberless and which he was chary of showing, were piled in stacks against the wall. 

The following incident describes what I think an interesting side of Whistler's character. I was crossing the Pont des Saints Pères in a cab and he was walking in the same direction. As I overtook him I called, and he jumped in and sat alongside of me. On that day I was experiencing a sense of elation which comes to every artists, and when he asked, 'Well, Saint-Gaudens, how are you? I replied that I had just stuck up one of things in the exhibition and that I was feeling somewhat cocky about it.

'That's the way to feel!' he suddenly exclaimed. 'That's the way! If you ever feel otherwise, never admit it. Never admit it!' It seems to me that this reveals something of the quality of the man, the bravery of his attitude toward life. One had but to see his portrait of his mother, his 'Carlyle,' 'Piano,' and one or two other canvases, to realize that, though covered by his extraordinary wit, there was in his nature a deep substratum of true feeling.'"

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: J.S. Sargent, Pt. 2

"Portrait of a Boy (Homer Saint-Gaudens
and His Mother)"by J.S. Sargent

"During their many years of friendship, Sargent and Saint-Gaudens also offered each other advice and encouragement on commissions, especially when Sargent embarked on the production of sculpture. When Saint-Gaudens moved to Paris in 1897, he was consulted on the enlargement and patination of Sargent's relief decorations for the ambitious mural cycle on the development of Western religious thought (1890–1916) for the Boston Public Library. He reported to Rose Nichols in 1899 that Sargent had visited him in Paris: "He came to see me about the enlargement of his crucifixion for the Boston Library. It is in sculpture…. He has done a masterpiece".

Saint-Gaudens even dispatched his trusted caster Gaeton Ardisson to London to assist Sargent with a nine-foot crucifixion in gilded and painted plaster for the library's Dogma of the Redemption mural. Sargent also relied on Saint-Gaudens to oversee the casting of several reduced bronze casts in Paris, one of which he requested that the sculptor keep for himself as a token of gratitude.

Saint-Gaudens died in 1907 in Cornish, New Hampshire, where in 1919 Augusta and Homer Saint-Gaudens established a museum known as the Saint-Gaudens Memorial. In 1964, the Memorial transferred the property and contents to the National Park Service; it is now operated as the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. Among the earliest Memorial trustees was Sargent: he was on the board from 1922 until his death three years later, for a time holding the position of first vice president. Thus Sargent's final tribute to Saint-Gaudens was a posthumous, but tangible, act of friendship.

And what became of Homer Saint-Gaudens and his painting? After working in journalism and theater, Homer served as director of the Department of Fine Arts of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh from 1922 to 1950. Sargent's painting hung in the dining room in Aspet, the Saint-Gaudens family home in Cornish, until 1907; Homer Saint-Gaudens sold it to the Carnegie in 1932 after it had been on loan there for many years."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Sargent and Saint-Gaudens" by Thayer Tolles, the Marica F. Vilcek Curator of American Painting and Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: J.S. Sargent

"Violet Sargent," 50"x 34" 
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

After reading a brief comment on Saint-Gaudens' friendship with John Singer Sargent, I wished to know more, and was excited to find this excellent article by Thayer Tolles on that very subject on The Met website:

"Augustus Saint-Gaudens's esteem for John Singer Sargent is captured in an 1899 letter that he wrote to his niece Rose Nichols: 'He is a big fellow and, what is, I'm inclined to think, a great deal more, a good fellow.' Both men had a gift for friendship and shared many mutual friends and sitters including William Merritt Chase, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Ellen Terry. 

Sargent and Saint-Gaudens's own bond spanned decades, covering ground from Paris and London to New York and Boston. The two artists met in Paris in late 1877 or early 1878 while occupying nearby studios on the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. The two men regularly attended social gatherings at Frank Millet's Montmartre studio, a locus for American artists living in Paris who assembled as the cryptically named Stomach Club.

Sargent and Saint-Gaudens maintained their friendship over three decades as they both rose to the top of their careers and spent time on both sides of the Atlantic. On several occasions, they exchanged works of art as friendship tokens. First, they traded a cast of Saint-Gaudens's low-relief portrait of Jules Bastien-Lepage for Sargent's watercolor of a female figure from a visit to Capri in 1878. The location of Sargent's Bastien-Lepage cast is unknown, while the watercolor burned in a disastrous fire in Saint-Gaudens' Cornish, New Hampshire, studio in 1904, as did most of Sargent's letters to the sculptor. 

In 1890, when Sargent was on an extended visit to the United States, the two artists again exchanged artwork, this time on a more ambitious scale. It was then that Sargent completed his painting of Homer and Augusta Saint-Gaudens, with seven sittings taking place in his temporary studio at Madison Avenue and 23rd Street in New York. In return, Saint-Gaudens executed a bas-relief of Sargent's younger sister Violet, with Sargent ordering bronze and marble replicas. 

Saint-Gaudens first met Violet Sargent in February 1890 at William Merritt Chase's New York studio during a performance of the legendary Spanish dancer Carmencita. Said to be captivated by Violet's profile, Saint-Gaudens arranged to model her likeness. The genial, honest nature of their friendship is suggested in a letter that Sargent wrote Saint-Gaudens as to the most winning pose for his sister:

'I have a sort of feeling that, given my sister's head, I should rather have a rond-bon [high relief]—even ever so slight, than a bas [low]- relief…. However you know best and I am sure you will do something charming in any case and I will admire it tremendously…. At any rate pardon my silly interference. I am surprised at myself for behaving just like the worst bourgeois.'

In the end, Saint-Gaudens ignored Sargent's 'bourgeois' recommendations and completed a full-length low-relief portrait in which Violet is seated and playing a guitar."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Sargent and Saint-Gaudens" by Thayer Tolles, the Marica F. Vilcek Curator of American Painting and Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

 

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Honors in France

"Amor Caritas" at the Luxembourg
Museum by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "Allied with work on the Stevenson came work on the other medallions, the 'Angel with the Tablet,' and the reduced bas-reliefs, which, together with the larger work in two exhibitions, had much to do with the French Government's creating my father an Officer of The Legion of Honor, with their making him a Corresponding Member of the Société des Beaux Arts, and with their offering to purchase certain of his bronzes for the Luxembourg Museum - in particular the 'Angel with the Tablet'.

What led my father to consider altering once more the ideal figure which he had developed from the Morgan tomb angel into the Smith tomb form, was that John S. Sargent had become interested in the composition of the Smith tomb figure and had desired to make a painting of it. Therefore, since my father had the greatest admiration for Sargent, he began to believe in a piece of his own work that could be paid so high a compliment. Also realizing that the most skillful sculptors in the world would see it in bronze, my father felt it needful to give his attention to each and every detail. As a result, though he made only the fewest changes in the general composition, he modeled the wings in a more formal fashion and simplified the drapery with the greatest care. Indeed this process of conventionalization went even to the inscription, where the pains he took to substitute the present result shows anew his anxiety over even the smallest trifles. 

It is pleasant to remember that the composition achieved such a success in the large that my father decided to reduce it to the small size now so frequently seen. He often announced his intention of producing this reduced figure in marble inlaid with gold and ivory and precious stones. Unfortunately he never found the time or the proper occasion.  

In a letter Augustus Saint-Gaudens explained:

'Since my last letter I have seen the Director of the Luxembourg. It is now settled that the Government is to purchase the 'Angel with the Tablet,' for which I will ask them a nominal sum, as I wished it clearly understood that it was solicited and bought, not offered by me to them. They said that Burne-Jones had given them a painting when they asked to purchase one for a small sum, as he felt the honor of being solicited. I said, 'That's the way I feel, too, and I would do likewise, but I do not wish to have it thought in France that I offered my work to museums.' 

Yesterday the gentleman, a government official, who was the intermediary between the Director and me in the affair at first, came to tell me that my name had been inscribed for the Legion of Honor, and that, if it were not officially put through in January, it would be in the spring certainly. He also took me to see two of the most distinguished of the new men here, and I have been loaded down with praise and attention by him and them; all of which is very pleasant, 'n'est-ce pas?'" 

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Encore Paris

"William Tecumseh Sherman Monument"
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: The previous chapter ended the account of my father's life in New York. He never returned there again as a resident. From the 'Farragut' to the 'Shaw' he had given it his prime, his health. He left it a sick man, crippled for the remainder of his life by the ardor of his work. He had but ten years to live, ten years which he contrived through an extraordinary strength of will and body to spend wholly upon his art. 

It was his knowledge that his art had reached its strength that had given him his desire to visit France. For in Paris alone he could measure himself with his contemporaries, place his work before the world's most critical audience, and learn, once for all, wherein it was good and wherein bad.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens recalls: 

'On arriving in Paris, after the usual inevitable agony of a search for a studio, racing from one side of the city to the other, and back and forth, I found a place in a charming little gardenlike passage in the Rue de Bagneux. There I began by remodeling the figure of the Sherman Victory and some studies of the groups I have still to do for the Boston Public Library. I shall do everything that lies in my power to make them as good as anything I have ever executed, and they are somewhat in a category with the Shaw monument. The bust of Martin Brimmer I also did in Paris for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the medallion of Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, who was then visiting Paris. First of all, however, stood my work upon the 'Sherman,' and while I was at it the days came and went rapidly because of my steady and enthusiastic toil.'

Homer continues: '

Another commission was the large variation of his Stevenson relief. It was remodeled for the church of St. Giles in Edinburgh, Scotland. The commission gave him occasion to make two trips to England, where he felt most happy over the cordiality with which he was received by the English artists and sculptors, who ultimately made him a member of the Royal Academy. For example, a dinner was given him at Earl's Court, a sort of London Coney Island, whereat that serious body of men, Sargent, Abbey, Sir Alma-Tadema and the rest, with their serious group of women-folk, behaved as all serious people should upon such an occasion. From that dinner, not so very serious, they went to see the Javanese dancers."

To be continued

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

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The Need of Infinite Pains

Etching of August Saint-Gaudens
by Anders Zorn

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "The need of infinite pains in all things that I have mentioned was my father's chief advice, which he managed to mingle successfully with a power to urge his pupils ahead. For in some strange fashion he could instill into them the feeling that work which might do credit to a pupil one month should not be accepted the next, yet at the same time arouse in them the capability of endless patience toward thoughtful effort. To him a good thing was no better for being done quickly. Change after change should be made if needed to produce what was best.

Conceive an idea,' he would say. 'Then stick to it. Those who hang on are the only ones who amount to anything.'  

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Principles, Pt. 2

"The Puritan" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "The most satisfactory beginning of sculpture, to my father's mind, lay in the ability to draw in charcoal. So back his would-be pupils often went to the 'antique' or other lower classes with the advice that, for the rest of the season, they draw very slowly and with great consideration in the manner of Holbein or Ingres, putting down but one line at a time and not changing it thereafter. 

Another, tough less important, foundation which he insisted upon was an understanding of anatomy, since he reasoned that the knowledge of what was possible in the human figure would prove of immense aid in reproducing just what was before one. 'Every man who today discourages anatomy, studied it with care in his youth. Now he simply does not appreciate what he learned,' he would say.

Then when the prepared student came to my father's hands, he was told to work as naively and as primitively as possible, to leave no tool marks showing, to make his surfaces seem as if they had grown there, to develop technique and then to hide it. He assured them that they need never fear ruining their imagination or their sense of beauty by their attention to the fundamentals while in class. Aesthetic qualities, if ever in them, would remain, though they could not be acquired at any price if not inherent. They were in school to learn to handle their tools and to copy the model accurately and absolutely, until the ability to construct became automatic. 

They should be right, even if they had to be ugly, and to that end they should take all the measurements they wished of a model. Occasionally an inspired youth would remark that he never measured his work, upon which my father would promptly rage, for he said: 'You will have trouble enough in producing good art as it is without scorning such mechanical means as you can take. Beside, continuous measuring will train your eye to see accurately. Nobody can give the length of a foot off-hand as well as a carpenter.'"

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Principles

Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his
"Standing Lincoln"

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "There then, I will try to explain in some measure the details of my father's professional and personal advice. First in this effort let me give the one attempt he made to define the goal towards which he felt both he and those around him were striving. I take it from a note I came upon in his scrapbook after his death:

 'I thought that art seemed to be the concentration of the experience and sensations of life in painting, literature, sculpture, and particularly acting, which accounts for the desire in artists to have realism. However, there is still the feeling of the lack of something in the simple representation of some indifferent action. The imagination must be able to bring up the scenes, incidents, that impress us in life, condense them, and the truer they are to nature the better. The imagination may condemn that which has impressed us beautifully as well as the strong or characteristic or ugly.'

With this artistic creed, he believed a facile technique to be most needed to express these experiences and sensations, a technique which could only be gained by training and drudgery. Therefore he always remained an advocate of that long schooling which he insisted would help the mediocre and never hurt the talented.

In carrying out such a course his two chief doctrines were, 'Beware of discouraging a pupil. You never can tell how that pupil will develop, consequently take as great pains to mention the good as the bad,' and, 'Refrain from ridicule, unless ridicule is the only way to get your remarks home.' With the attentive he was all attention, but he had no toleration for the badly-grounded, the frivolous or noisy, the man with the excuse, or the man skeptical of his teacher's ability to speak with authority. 

He stood as the apostle of academic work having 'construction' as the password. To his pupils seriously applying themselves, he gently urged the influence of the Greeks before that of Michelangelo and his school. The names he set before his followers were Phidias, Praxiteles, Michelangelo, Donatello, Luca della Robbia, Jean Goujon, Houdon, Rude, David d'Angers and Paul Dubois."

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Frederick MacMonnies

"Princeton Battle Monument"
by Frederick MacMonnies

"Of all my pupils, none has approached in importance a lad sent me by some stone-cutter as a studio boy whom he thought would answer my purpose. This was Frederick William MacMonnies. Since I was always busy and still taking myself very seriously, though by then old enough to know better, I gave scant attention to the youth. I did notice, however, that he was pale, delicate, and attractive looking, and one day I found a pronounced artistic atmosphere in some little terra-cotta sketches of animals which he brought to me. From that moment the charm of his work began to assert itself, until it became evident that I had a young man who was to make his mark.

He remained with me five years before he went to Paris. But he returned again when subsequently I asked him to come back and help me for a year or less on the fountain which I was commissioned to do at the same time as the 'Lincoln.' I was much behind in my work and, since I needed somebody who could aid me with skill and rapidity, I could think of no one better.

He modeled the boys that are in that fountain, and though he created them under my direction, whatever charm there may be in them is entirely due to his remarkable artistic ability, and whatever there is without charm can be laid at my door. He went to Europe immediately after that, and I did not see him again until the Chicago Exposition."

Homer Saint-Gaudens writes "In the course of Saint-Gaudens' stay in Paris between 1897 and 1900, he met MacMonnies and realized, with a personal sense of sadness, that the youth of the earlier days in the Thirty-sixth Street studio had, quite naturally, 'grown up,' and was no longer the same protégé whom he had once known and cared for. But becoming philosophical as the years passed, he recognized that master and disciple must sometimes draw apart. In a long letter to one of his friends he wrote:

"This last page is for a very delicate subject, MacMonnies. It took me several months to realize it, but finally, with deep bitterness and sorrow, I discovered that the friend I had loved was as dead as Bion to me. The gentle, tender bird I had caressed out of its egg had turned to a proud eagle, with (most naturally) a world of his own, a life of his own, and likes and dislikes of his own. The angel boy had grown into the virile man with a distinct personality; my boy had gone forever. 

I find that I have met in Mac another man, whose acquaintance I am now making - no doubt a fine fellow and a devoted friend when I get to know him again. It is all quite natural, and it was unnatural in me to expect that he was not subject to the same development as the rest of us."

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The Teacher

August Saint-Gaudens' class at the Art Students League

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "Saint-Gaudens' text, having led him through half his stay in New York, offers me a fitting place to enlarge on his chief professional interest not definitely connected with his own work, his teaching. This interest developed as the natural result not only of his high reverence for the seriousness of the art of sculpture, but also because of a strongly reciprocated affection for youth. The French masters often charged a round sum for a criticism, but if Saint-Gaudens felt certain that a pupil was serious in his efforts, he would go any distance to give advice to that pupil. 

He would go, busy or sick. He would go even when he knew that the zest of the subsequent morning's or afternoon's work would be impaired or demolished by the reaction of genuine regret over his pupil's lack of ability. Moreover, with the same spirit, toward the close of a competition in his class, to which he was supposed to come only twice a week, he would often appear every afternoon and Sundays as well; while, whenever he believed he had discovered some new idea about his work, he could not be happy until he had explained it to those he taught.

For instance, after he had modeled upon the Sherman cloak about two months, he suddenly caught the composition he desired. He never rested till he had finished. But on the moment of its completion he hurried uptown to his class to tell them that 'When an idea comes you must work quickly and refuse to leave it until you get what you desire.'

In a like manner, for their part, too, his pupils offered him unwavering affection and loyalty, though it is amusing to remember that in one another's presence both teacher and students were invariably nervous. I am told that the latter would become panic-stricken the moment they caught sight of Saint-Gaudens' rough homespun suit. In a jiffy sponges, lathes, and quick ways of working, the 'concert tools,' went under the table, and the special hook for his hat, his clean towel, plumbline, and fresh clay were instantly prepared. While my father, on his side frequently spoke of the difficulty caused him by his self-conscious desire to maintain his dignity. He used to say that whenever he criticized it always brought about an itching of his right shin which continued until the desire to stand upon his right foot and scratch his shin with his left heel was too great to be resisted." 

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Diana of the Tower

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "My father's remaining task which I will mention, the Diana for the Tower of the Madison Square Garden in New York, was purely a labor of love. Standford White originally suggested to him that he consent to give his work upon it, provided White pay the expenses; and Saint-Gaudens eagerly grasped the opportunity, since, as I have said, all his life he was anxious to create ideal figures, with scarcely an occasion to gratify his desires, this indeed being the only nude he ever completed. 

Unwittingly, however, the two men drew upon themselves a more expensive effort than they were prepared to bear. The Diana was first modeled eighteen feet high, according to White's estimate, and finished in hammered sheet copper, only to be found too large when hoisted into place. So, in order to replace her with the present figure, thirteen feet high, both sculptor and architect were forced to empty their pocketbooks, calling to witness all the while that they would never undertake another commission without beginning their task by erected a dummy, a resolve which they kept."

"The original Diana was shipped to Chicago to be exhibited at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition atop the Agricultural Building. New Yorker W.T. Henderson wrote a tongue-in-cheek poetic tribute - "Diana Off the Tower" - a play on both the statue's name and situation. Eight months after the exposition's closing, a major fire tore through its buildings. The lower half of the statue was destroyed; the upper half survived the fire, but was later lost or discarded."

The second version (1893) pleased Stanford White so much that he asked Saint-Gaudens to create a half-sized copy in cement. This was installed in the garden of White's Long Island estate, Box Hill, where it stood for many years. For the half-sized copy, Saint-Gaudens poised the figure on a half-ball. White's cement statue later was used to produce two bronze casts in 1928, and six bronze casts in 1987.  Saint-Gaudens also modeled statuettes in two sizes: 31 inches (78 cm), with the figure poised on a half-ball, and 21 inches (53 cm), with the figure poised on a full ball. These were cast in bronze beginning in 1899, and vary in the configuration of bow, arrow, string, hair, patination, and base."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his son, Homer Saint-Gaudens and Wikipedia's article on the statue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_(Saint-Gaudens ) 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Appreciation of Character

Robert Louis Stevenson

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "My father's reverence for the charm of Robert Louis Stevenson brought to a focus in him two new and vital developments: his appreciation of character in those around him, and his admiration of the art of letters. 

Regarding his understanding of character, hitherto he had shown little interest in men or women except as they bore upon his work, and his sitters had never consciously been anything but visible, tangible objects to interpret. With such an attitude he had approached Stevenson. But after each visit there grew in the sculptor a desire to comprehend the mental significance of the man before him and to bring it to light through his physical expression and gesture, even if the process was made at the sacrifice of 'smart' modeling. So it came about that, from the time of the Stevenson medallion, Saint-Gaudens applied this attitude to every other work, beginning each portrait by reading all possible biographies of the subject, or, if the person he planned to model was alive, keeping him in a constant state of conversation.

In a similar way, too, there was developed Saint-Gaudens' deep regard for the English language. Before his meeting with Stevenson he knew very little of modern writing. He had enjoyed occasional novels by Anatole France and had read Maupassant, though finding him depressing. Now, however, caught by Stevenson's charm, he followed that author from stories to essays and departed thence to essays by other pens until he became a steady and appreciative reader, with a strong liking for what he called 'aroma' or 'perfume' in literary effort."

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The Stevenson Memorial

"Robert Louis Stevenson" medallion
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"It is singular how one will forget important things. I was about to overlook my experience with Robert Louis Stevenson, which took place in the autumn of 1887. Shortly before this time my friend, Mr. Wells, drew my attention to the 'New Arabian Night,' by a young author just making himself known. My introduction to these stories set me aflame as have few things in literature. So when I subsequently found that my friend, Will Low, knew Stevenson quite well, I told him that, if Stevenson ever crossed to this side of the water, I should consider it an honor if he would allow me to make his portrait.

It was but a few weeks after this that Stevenson arrived in America on his way to the Adirondacks. He accepted my offer at once, and I began the medallion at his rooms in the Hotel Albert in Eleventh Street, not far from where I lived. All I had the time to do from him then was the head, which I modeled in five sittings of two or three hours each. These were given me in the morning, while he, as was his custom, lay in bed propped up with pillows, and either read or was read to by Mrs. Stevenson.

I can remember some few things as to my personal impressions of him. He said that he believed 'Olala' to be his best story, or that he fancied it the best, and that George Meredith was the greatest English littérateur of the time. Also he told me of his pet-liking for his own study of Robert Burns. He gave me a complete set of his own works, in some of which he placed a line or two. In 'Virginibus Puerique,' he wrote, 'Read the essay on Burns. I think it is a good thing.' Thus the modest man!

After having modeled the head, I had determined to make Stevenson's medallion large enough to include the hands, and for that purpose, in order not to disturb him, I had begun them from those of Mrs. Saint-Gaudens', whose long, slender fingers I had noticed resembled his. But this result would not come out successfully, so I begged him for a sitting that I might make a drawing and some casts. He assented and a day was appointed. 

I asked Stevenson to pose and suggested to him that if he would try to write, some natural attitude might result. He assented, and taking a sheet of paper, of which he always had a lot lying around on the bed, pulled his knees up and began. Immediately his attitude was such that I was enabled to create something of use. I believe I made another visit to Manasquan, for, as well as the drawing, I possessed casts of Stevenson's hands which I used in modeling. He shortly after went to Samoa. I had two or three letters from him on the receipt of the medallion, which took an unconscionable time in reaching him. There my relations with him ended. He died at the age of forty-four." 

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Life in the Studio

"Dr. James McCosh"
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"At the time I was working also on the Shaw Memorial, and as the model of the bust of the president of Princeton University, Dr. McCosh, stood directly in front of it, each day I had to move the portrait away. This required much bother of preparation. My appointments with Dr. McCosh came in the morning. He wanted to pose early, and I wanted him to pose late so that I could have a good three or four hours on the Shaw before I began with him. As a result there remained an underlying conflict between us as to the time, until we compromised and he agreed to arrive an hour or so later than had been his habit.

On the first morning of the new order of things, therefore, without making any preparations for Dr. McCosh's coming, I proceeded with my work upon my horse [for the Shaw Memorial]. The animal stood on one side, next to the wall, and as the studio re-echoed like a sounding board, keeping him there was much like hitching him in your parlor, while the pawing and kicking of the resentful animal, tied about with all kinds of straps to hold him in position, resembled the violent tumbling and hurling around of great rocks on the floor. Besides, I had an arrangement of boxes on which I climbed to my work, so that between the stamping of the horse, the shouting and curses of the man who held him, and my own rushing up and down from the horse to the model and the model to the horse, the studio was far from a place of rest.

Notwithstanding the agreement, however, Dr. McCosh appeared an hour and a half earlier than the appointed time. I was excessively displeased at his coming and said, 'Dr. McCosh, you are early and I am afraid I shall have to keep on as I have made arrangements for the horse.' 'Go ahead, go ahead,' he replied. 'I'll sit down here and wait.' Accordingly, Dr. McCosh sat down in one corner without seeing my father, who already slept in another. Nor was it long before he fell asleep too, and the snores of my father, vigorous and strong, contrasting with the gentle, academic ones of Dr. McCosh, lent singularity to the occasion. 

Nevertheless, I proceeded with my work and they with their sleeping until, at the hour agreed upon, I stepped from my scaffolding, the man removed the boxes, of which there were twenty or thirty, making a great commotion, the horse was led out of the stall, saddled, bridled, the big double doors leading to the street were unbolted and opened, the man mounted, and with a final multitudinous pounding and standing on hind legs within two feet of Dr. McCosh, the anxious horse rumbled out of the studio, noisy enough to wake the dead, leaped into the street and rushed off to his oats.

Yet Dr. McCosh and my father slept on as peacefully as children. As I was afraid of losing too much of Dr. McCosh's time for my sitting, I stood close by and made noise loud enough to waken even him. As he opened his eyes, I said gently and amiably: 'Dr. McCosh, you have been having a nap.' 'Oh, no, not at all,' he said. 'Not at all, not at all. I have been waiting for you!'"

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The Adams Memorial

"The Adams Memorial" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "It must not be imagined that during the stay of the Shaw Memorial in my father's studio that it occupied his thoughts to the exclusion of other work. Quite on the contrary, there were periods of months when he would refuse to look at this task, in order that upon seeing it once more he might have a fresh eye and unconsciously matured thoughts. In the course of the first ten years in the Thirty-sixth Street studio nearly forty other works, which varied in importance from large plaques to such smaller portraits as that of Miss Violet Sargent, modeled in exchange for John Sargent's painting of myself, were completed."

Among these concurrent commissions were also Augustus Saint-Gaudens' "Lincoln, the Man," for the city of Chicago, "The Puritan," which was so popular that he made forty reductions of it, and the "Adams Memorial," a grave marker for Marian Hooper Adams located in the Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C. 

The account is once more taken up by Homer: "He looked back with fondness to the time spent upon this latter monument, curtained off in a studio corner. Here was one of the few opportunities offered him to break from the limitations of portraiture, limitations from which all his life he longed to be free, in order to create imaginative compositions. Moreover, he constantly spoke to me and to others of his pleasure in suggesting the half-concealed, and because of this pleasure, the veiled face of this figure gave him infinite delight to dwell upon. 

At the date Mr. Adams gave Saint-Gaudens the commission, he felt in sympathy with the religious attitudes of the East. So my father sought to embody a philosophic calm, a peaceful acceptance of death and whatever lay in the future. He conceived the figure as both sexless and passionless, a figure for which there posed sometimes a man, sometimes a woman. 

A description was the end result was written up in a Parisian magazine:

'A woman is seated upon a block of stone, with her back against the monolith. She is covered from head to foot by an ample cloak which falls about her in simple, dignified folds. Her head alone is visible, a stern and forbidding profile. Her chin is resting upon her hand; her eyes are cast down. She is not sleeping, she is musing; and that reverie will last as long as the stone itself. Silent, dead as the world knows her, wholly absorbed in her reverie, she is the image of Eternity and Meditation... In me personally it awakens a deeper emotion than any other modern work of art.'"

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The Shaw Memorial, Pt. 2

Details of the Plaster for the Shaw Memorial
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "I should dwell now upon the more serious aspects of the Shaw memorial as it emerged from one of my father's favorite low-reliefs to that extremely 'high' development, which he felt sure would be more effective in the open air. During the process he struggled with difficulty after difficulty, both technical and artistic. In one direction, for example, the constant wetting of the clay and the covering of the Shaw with damp rags became such a nuisance that  he began to look about for a substitute. The result was American plastoline [plasticine] now in common use. A great to-do also arose over such endless questions as those concerning the historical accuracy of the dress. For instance, when it came to the flag, he sent to have the original carefully sketched in the Boston State House.

Another thing were the countless legs and feet of the infantry which seemed to bewilder him, until slowly from the chaos he learned his lesson of dealing with repeated accents; a lesson suggested to him by the effect of the troops passing beneath his window in the days of his cameo cutting, by a French military funeral which he often spoke of as impressing him a few years later, and by the use of the spears and vertical lines in such compositions as Velasquez's 'Surrender of Breda.' 

For another thing, the problem of accoutrements, of the spotty effects made by the canteens, developed in him a sensitive regard for the rounding-off of mechanically hard lines, until the final and uninteresting became always slightly hidden and suggestive. The process took definite shape on a day when he complained to Frederick MacMonnies, then pressing out these canteens, that he hated them, as he did all things completely analyzed and shown. Whereupon MacMonnies replied, 'Hide part of them under the drapery.' At which my father tested his suggestion with such relish at the resulting mystery and charm, that he not only adopted it permanently, but instituted a system of what he later called 'fluing,' a general term including many devices, from the breaking up of lines to the filling of those black holes, which, if he placed logically in his desired folds of drapery, he would model to unsightly depths. 

But, most of all, the flying figure drove my father nearly frantic in his efforts to combine the ideal with the real. For the face he tried first the beautiful head of Miss Annie Page. But that, like the features of any model always became much too personal. So he relied wholly upon his imagination to produce a result which his friends and pupils have said somewhat recalled his mother and somewhat an old model in Paris; though I believe that every woman of beauty who was near him impressed his work. He even returned to the work in later years, having by that time come to the conclusion that the flying figure was not mysterious enough. Therefore he remodeled her once more during the last part of his life.

And what were his thoughts at spending so much thought and time on this monument? In a letter he said:

'Too much time cannot be spent on a task that is to endure for centuries, and it is a great mistake to hurry or hamper any artist in the production of work they have so much at heart. Time passed on it is certainly not money gained, and results from a conscientious endeavor to avoid the execution of an unworthy thing. You should consider yourself fortunate not to have fallen into the hands of a sculptor who would rush the commission through on time, regardless of the future, in order to get and make quickly the most money possible. A bad statue is an impertinence and an offense. Paul Dubois, the great Frenchman, spent fifteen years on his 'Joan of Arc.' I had the Shaw monument fourteen years, the 'Sherman' ten.'"

To be continued

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

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The Shaw Memorial, Pt. 1

Sketches in clay for Shaw Memorial

Plaster for the Shaw Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens
at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

"I had scarcely moved into the studio in which I would work for the next fifteen years, when I renewed my acquaintance with the man who was largely instrumental in obtaining the one piece of work which remained in that place through almost my whole stay. The man was the architect, Mr. H.H. Richardson, the work the Shaw relief. [The monument marks Robert Gould Shaw's death on July 18, 1863, after he and his troops attacked Fort Wagner, one of two forts protecting the strategic Confederate port or Charleston, South Carolina.]

Mr. Richardson was also a great friend of Messrs. Atkinson, Lee and Higginson. Consequently it was at his suggestion that they determined to see whether it was not possible to have me execute a monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, which had been proposed but abandoned. They had about fifteen thousand dollars, and I was engaged to complete it for that sum, since I, like most sculptors at the beginning of their careers, felt that by hook or crook I must do an equestrian statue, and that here I had found my opportunity. 

Therefore I proceeded with this theory until the Shaw family objected on the ground that, although Shaw was of a noble type, as noble as any, still he had not been a great commander, and only men of the highest rank should be so honored. In fact, it seemed pretentious. Accordingly, in casting about for some manner of reconciling my desire with their ideas, I fell upon a plan of associating him directly with his troops in a bas-relief, and thereby reducing his importance. I made a sketch showing this scheme, and the monument as it now stands is virtually what I indicated.

I began work on it at once, and soon it took up the entire width of the studio, as it stood about two-thirds of the way back from the street, with behind it a platform about eight feet high, on which I placed whatever statue I had to do that would ultimately be on a pedestal. However, I, through my extreme interest in it and its opportunity, increased the conception until the rider grew almost to a statue in the round and the soldiers assumed far more importance than I had originally intended. Hence the monument, developing in this way infinitely beyond what could be paid for, became a labor of love, and lessened my hesitation in setting it aside at times to make way for more lucrative commissions, commissions that would reimburse me for the pleasure and time I was devoting to this." 

To be continued

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