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For more on the the Saint Gaudens National Historical Park, see the first post in this series. This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/V00vKbC8ZAQ.

In this post: more sculptures from the New Gallery.

Admiral Farragut, 1881

Farragut was Saint Gaudens’s first major commission, and its style immediately made Saint Gaudens one of America’s foremost sculptors. Among the innovations: Farragut seems to be not posing for a portrait, but standing on the deck of his flagship, with binoculars in hand and the wind whipping the hem of his coat. Also, the marble pedestal is not simply a box; it’s designed to tell more about Farragut. This pedestal was the first of many collaborations with architect Stanford White, whose wife Saint Gaudens sculpted. (See last week’s post.) By the 1930s – fifty years after the dedication and 25 years after the advent of the automobile – the pedestal was deteriorating. Works Progress Administration artists copied the design to durable granite, and New York City donated the original pedestal to the SGNHP, where it supports a later copy of Farragut’s figure.

For more on Farragut, see Artist-Entrepreneurs. On the New York City sculpture (with the WPA pedestal), see here.

Puritan, 1887

After having been commissioned to create a sculpture honoring Deacon Samuel Chapin, one of the founders of Springfield, Massachusetts, Saint Gaudens asked the family research 17th-century woodcuts to discover what the figure’s clothing should look like. This work set Americans’ image for Puritans. For more on the Puritan, see Artist-Entrepreneurs.

More on the Puritan in Springfield here, here, and here.

Seated Lincoln, 1908

Saint Gaudens began working on this monumental piece for Chicago in 1897. In 1904, a fire in his studio destroyed all the drawings and models. Saint Gaudens designed it anew, but it had to be completed by his assistants in 1908.

Although the Seated Lincoln was dedicated years after Daniel Chester French’s Lincoln was unveiled in the Lincoln Memorial (1920), it predates French’s work. Due to a dispute over the Chicago site, the Seated Lincoln was not dedicated until 1926, in Grant Park. It’s less famous than Saint Gaudens’s Standing Lincoln (Lincoln Park, Chicago), but it represents Saint Gaudens’s ultimate effort to portray the toll that being president took on Lincoln.

For more on this Lincoln, see here. For more on Saint Gaudens’s Standing Lincoln, see Artist-Entrepreneurs.

Saint Gaudens’s assistants

Saint Gaudens left a lasting legacy not only in his sculpture, but in the sculptors he trained. The Saint Gaudens National Historical Park has works of a number of his assistants. To me their works seem highly competent, but not as unique or as moving as Saint Gaudens’s … see what you think.

Above:

• Gaetan Ardisson (1856-1926) was a studio assistant from 1884 to 1907.
• Charles Keck (1875-1951) was a studio assistant from 1893 to 1898. This memorial plaque to the USS Maine, which was sunk in Havana harbor in 1898, was cast from metal recovered from the ship. The Maine Memorial at Columbus, Circle, New York, has a cast of this plaque on the side facing Central Park. Keck’s other works in New York City include memorials to Father Francis Duffy, 1937, and Governor Alfred E. Smith, 1946.
• James Earle Fraser (1876-1953) was a studio assistant from 1895 to 1907. This portrait of Theodore Roosevelt from 1920 includes the inscription, “Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.” Fraser’s equestrian statue of Roosevelt (here and here), 1940, used to stand in front of the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West, New York City.

Above:

• Henry Hering (1874-1947) was Saint Gaudens’s studio assistant from 1900 to 1907. The SGNHP has his portraits of Charles A. Coffin, co-founder of General Electric (1911) and of Evarts Tracy, an architect (1912).
• Frances Grimes (1869-1963) was a studio assistant from 1900 to 1907. This portrait of Louis Henry Dow, a professor at Dartmouth College, dates to 1922.

My favorite among the works of the assistants on display at SGNHP is by Helen F. Mears (1872-1916), who was a studio assistant in 1898, the year she modelled this relief of Saint Gaudens. The textures and the sensitivity of the modelling are excellent. Mears also sculpted a relief of Saint Gaudens with his monument to Sherman.

Next week: Saint Gaudens’s home and garden, the Temple, and one final relief portrait.

More

• Admission to the Saint Gaudens National Historical Park is free if you have a senior pass from the National Parks Service, which can be purchased for a one-time fee.
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