Blog

About this series

This occasional series of blog posts will highlight the most important of the outdoor sculptures in New York City and provide some historical and art-historical context. To read other blog posts in this series, click on the New York City Sculpture tag. For photos of all outdoor sculptures in New York City in chronological order, see my Instagram page.

This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/GXBpCnDfKNc.

The first seven posts looked at the subjects of outdoor sculptures. In the first, we saw sculptures of animals and politicians. In the second, we saw our first military and literary heroes. The third post included a list of memorials to the Civil War, and the fourth post, figures active before 1800, including Founding Fathers. The fifth was on businessmen. The sixth was on figures in the arts. The seventh included allegorical figures through 1918.

The next few posts in this series look at sculptors who were famous in New York City and throughout America. Our earliest was John Quincy Adams Ward. With this post, we move on to the sculptor who is perhaps America’s most famous – and is one of my own favorites.

This post is based on the chapter on Saint Gaudens in Artist-Entrepreneurs: Saint Gaudens, MacMonnies, Parrish. I’ve abridged it to focus on works by Saint Gaudens in New York City.

Augustus Saint Gaudens

Saint Gaudens (1848-1907), son of Irish immigrants, worked as a teenager for a cameo cutter while taking courses in art at New York’s Cooper Union.

When he traveled to Europe to study, Saint Gaudens supplemented his income by cutting cameos and doing other small commissions. One of those was the medallions for the Bryant Vase by Tiffany & Co., which was displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.

By the 1870s, when Saint Gaudens returned to America, he had a solid knowledge of ancient and modern sculpture as well as drawing and low-relief carving.

Farragut, 1880

Saint Gaudens’ big break was the Farragut Monument, unveiled in 1880 when he was thirty-two. The larger-than-life-size bronze figure of a Civil War admiral stands on a pedestal fifteen feet wide and seven feet high in New York City’s Madison Square.

At the time, portrait sculptures were either in the idealized, Neoclassical style (see Clinton at the Green-Wood Cemetery) or, like those of John Quincy Adams Ward, were meticulously executed but standing stock still.

Saint Gaudens broke the mold by showing Admiral Farragut as if he stands on the deck of his flagship, binoculars in hand, the wind blowing the edge of his uniform. We see not just the physical likeness, but something of his character and actions: what made him a man worthy of a monument.

Saint Gaudens collaborated with architect Stanford White on the Farragut Monument’s pedestal, creating an ensemble rather than merely a figure perched on a box. The pedestal is curved, inviting us closer so that we can see it all. On either side is a lengthy inscription about Farragut’s service to his country. We don’t need to read the inscription to identify the figure as a heroic naval officer, but if we do, it adds something to our knowledge of him.

The sword and waves on the pedestal show that he’s a military man at sea.

Saint Gaudens liked to combine allegorical and real figures to convey more than a portrait alone could. The reliefs on the base are of Loyalty and Courage: two of Farragut’s important virtues.

Later commissions

Over the next three decades, Saint Gaudens executed many important commissions. Here we’ll glance at four of the most notable.

The Puritan for Springfield, Massachusetts, 1887, has become everyone’s image of a Puritan or Pilgrim. The Lincoln for Chicago, also finished in 1887, has become one of our enduring images of Lincoln.

Saint Gaudens’s Diana hovered atop the original Madison Square Garden in 1891. The Shaw Memorial for Boston Common, 1897, honored the man who led a regiment of African-American troops in the Civil War.

Portraits in relief

Between monumental commissions, Saint Gaudens created many exquisite low-relief portraits. The Metropolitan Museum has several, including one of Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1882.

Sherman Monument

New York City has the Farragut Monument, Saint Gaudens’s first major work, and as well as his last major work. The Sherman Monument, 1903, is a brilliant combination of a meticulously accurate portrait with an allegorical figure. As usual, Saint Gaudens planned every detail, including the type of gold used on the surface and the angle at which the sculpture would be positioned on the site.

Coins

Related to Victory on the Sherman Monument is the figure on the only coin designed by Saint Gaudens. President Theodore Roosevelt, declaring that American coinage was in a state of “artistically atrocious hideousness,” invited America’s most famous sculptor to design new gold coins. Saint Gaudens’s double eagle (a one-ounce gold piece with a face value of $20) was first issued in 1907.

Saint Gaudens’s legacy

Saint Gaudens is an artist of very high caliber. He develops new themes and has a distinctive style. As a man, he has an admirable sense of life: he sees the universe as benevolent and man as dignified. In 1897, at age 49, he wrote:

In one of my blue fits the other day … reasoning about the hopelessness of trying to fathom what it all means, I reached this: we know nothing (of course) but a deep conviction came over me like a flash that at the bottom of it all, whatever it is, the mystery must be beneficent; it doesn’t seem … something malevolent. And the thought was a great comfort.” (Wilkinson, Uncommon Clay, p. 224)

Saint Gaudens didn’t pretend to understand the universe, but he thought it was benevolent. That explains a good deal about the sense of life shown in his sculptures. All his figures are dignified, thoughtful, unafraid. One would expect that of military heroes, but for Saint Gaudens it’s also true of children, women, and men such as Robert Louis Stevenson, who are ill.

Next in this series: Frederick MacMonnies.

More

• My Instagram account shows every outdoor sculpture in New York City, since in chronological order, with a short blurb on the subject and/or artist of each.
• In Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love, I demonstrate a method for looking at sculptures in detail, in depth, and on your own. Learn to enjoy your favorite sculptures more, and find new favorites. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle formats. More here.
• Want wonderful art delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my free Sunday Recommendations list and my Patreon page (free or by subscription): details here.