Commissioned by his descendants, "The Puritan (Deacon Samuel Chapin),” 1883–86, honored one of Springfield, Mass.'s early settlers, visibly a man of determination and piety. Stanford White designed the circular granite base and the surrounding landscape. Statuettes of this stalwart figure became the most commercially successful of Saint-Gaudens's reductions.
:Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907), the greatest American sculptor of his day and arguably the nation's finest sculptor ever, melded classical and modern styles in public statuary of enduring interest and importance. His creative genius and deep sense of humanity contributed to works of timeless and universal appeal.
From humble beginnings, Saint-Gaudens used cosmopolitan experience, energetic ambition and prodigious talent to change the course of American sculpture from a conventional classic aesthetic to a vibrant, naturalistic style based on his French Beaux-Arts training, and from marble to bronze as the preferred material for sculpture.
The most visible and accomplished American sculptor of his day, he played a major role in the nation's cultural life, becoming friends with a wide range of movers and shakers, many of whom became clients, and participating in progressive artists' organizations.
As head of sculpture at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, Saint-Gaudens helped perpetuate the French Beaux-Arts tradition in America through the City Beautiful Movement. He did much to popularize sculpture in the United States by encouraging Americans to commission small pieces and by producing editions of his own works. His "Farragut Monument" was a seminal aspect of the evolution of American sculpture and, with Theodore Roosevelt, he transformed US coinage.
Saint-Gaudens joined President Theodore Roosevelt in trying to produce coins as attractive as those from ancient times, notably in $10 and $20 gold pieces. The sculptor also designed (and his assistant Adolph Alexander Weinman modeled) a "Theodore Roosevelt Special Inaugural Medal” celebrating the launch of Roosevelt's second term in 1905. The obverse is a straightforward profile of the president, accompanied by the Latin motto for "to each what is equitable.” On the reverse of the 1905 "Theodore Roosevelt Special Inaugural Medal,” Saint-Gaudens portrayed a proud and powerful eagle posed on a rock, flanked by the motto of the seal of the United States, E PLVRIBVS VNVM — "Out of many, one.”
"Augustus Saint-Gaudens in the Metropolitan Museum of Art," on view through November 15, celebrates the museum's grand trove of the master's work and related loans.
Curated by Thayer Tolles, the museum's associate curator in the department of American painting and sculpture, the exhibition traces Saint-Gaudens's illustrious career through some nearly four dozen works: cameos and medals, portrait busts and reliefs, and statuettes relating to major civic monuments. They confirm the sculptor's exalted reputation and the enduring popularity of his oeuvre.
Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin, Ireland. His father was a shoemaker from the village of Aspet in the French Pyrenees, and his mother was Irish. Six months later, the family moved to New York City, where the future sculptor grew up.
Finishing his schooling at 13, Saint-Gaudens served a six-year apprenticeship with a French cameo-cutter while taking classes at Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design on the side. On view in the exhibition is an early shell cameo of New York lawyer "John Tuffs," circa 1861, a posthumous image that reflected Saint-Gaudens's skill in carving a challenging three-quarter pose.
At 19, after finishing his apprenticeship with a thorough knowledge of his craft and brimming with confidence, Saint-Gaudens studied at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, working at cameo-cutting to pay expenses. He also executed his first major work, "Hiawatha," 1871–72, inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem.
