Augustus Saint Gaudens: A Talented Sculptor

Talented Sculptor

In my many travels through the Internet I sometimes feel like Alice in Wonderland because I have come to realize as much as I think I know quite a lot I actually know very little. There are so many things still to learn and new discoveries to make every day in the cyber world. So when I discovered that this man was born on the same day I was except in a different century I got curious about him and decided to write about this famous man.

New York and Rome

This Irish-American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born on March 1, 1848 in Dublin, Ireland. His father was of French descent and his mother was Irish. He was just an infant when his parent immigrated to the United States and he was raised in New York. Saint-Gaudens

The architectural setting for the monument was designed by Saint-Gaudens friend Stanford White. The unveiling was in 1881 and this monument was so well-received that it established Saint-Gaudens reputation. One commission followed another. One impressive commission was the Standing Lincoln statue in Lincoln Park in Chicago. This statue’s setting was also done by White and it is looked upon as the finest portrait statue in the United States. There is a copy of the Standing Lincoln statue at Lincoln’s Tomb in Springfield, Illinois and another copy can be found in front of Westminster Abbey facing Parliament Square in London,

The sculptor became an artistic advisor for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. He supported the American Academy in Rome and part of the McMillan Commission. During his lifetime Saint-Gaudens worked with and trained a great many of the next generations finest sculptors. Saint-Gaudens was diagnosed with cancer in 1900 and he then decided to live in Cornish, New Hampshire at his Federal house which had a barn-studio and lovely gardens. He and his family had been spending their summers here starting from 1885. Here he was part of the Cornish Art Colony. The area itself attracted about a hundred artists, sculptors, writers, designers and politicians who lived in Cornish either full time or during the summers. Even though his energy was fading he continued to work and was one of the first of seven who were chosen for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences accepted him as a member in 1896. Saint-Gaudens lost a lot of his sketches and other works when there was a fire in the barn-studio. When Saint-Gaudens died in 1907 his house and gardens were preserved as the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site.

Saint-Gaudens was posthumously elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in 1920 and he was honored in 1940 by the U.S. Post Office which chose him to appear on a postage stamp