Saint-Gaudens, Augustus

Saint-Gaudens, Augustus

(1848–1907) sculptor; born in Dublin, Ireland. His parents emigrated to New York City in 1848. He was apprenticed to cameo cutters (1861–67), studied at Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design (1864–67), in Paris (1867), and established a studio in Rome (1870–72). He traveled throughout his life, but set up a studio in New York City (1875–97), and maintained a summer home and studio, Aspet, in Cornish, N.H., later to become a national historic site (1964). Considered the major American sculptor in the beaux-arts style, he created many commissioned works for John La Farge, Stanford White, and Charles McKim, among others, and was a founder of the Society of American Artists (1877). He is honored for his coin designs; Grief, his sculpture for the grave site of Mrs. Henry Adams (1886–91); the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial (1884–97), a commemoration of Shaw's leadership of a black Civil War division; and the equestrian sculpture of General Sherman (1897–1903), among many other fine works.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Saint-Gaudens, Augustus

 

Born Mar. 1, 1848, in Dublin; died Aug. 3, 1907, in Cornish, N.H. American sculptor.

Saint-Gaudens studied at the National Academy of Design in New York from 1864 to 1866 and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1867 to 1870. He worked in Rome (1870–72 and 1873–75) and in the United States. Saint-Gaudens was the most outstanding American sculptor of the 19th century. He combined precision and severe restraint with grace, vivid expressiveness, spontaneity, and naturalism.

Saint-Gaudens’s works include the bronze monuments to Admiral D. G. Farragut in New York (1881), A. Lincoln in Chicago (1887), and R. Shaw in Boston (1897), the Adams Memorial (bronze, 1891, Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D.C.), and the bas-relief portrait of R. L. Stevenson (bronze, 1899–1900, National Portrait Gallery, Washington). Another major work is Diana (copper, 1892, Philadelphia Museum of Art.)

REFERENCE

Hind.C. L. Augustus Saint-Gaudens. London-New York, 1908.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.