Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born in 1948 in Dublin, Ireland. His father was a french shoemaker and his mother was Irish. His family emigrated to the New York City when Augustus was 6 months old. After completing school at age 13, he expressed strong interest in art as a career and was apprenticed to a cameo cutter. During this time, he attended art classes.

At age 19, he traveled to Paris where he studied at the renowned Ecole des Beaux-Arts. (He wanted to be a sculptor.) At age 22, he went to Rome, where, for the next five years, he studied classical art and architecture and worked on his first commissions. Here, he also met his future wife, Augusta Homer. His first major commission, a monument to the Civil War Adm. David Glasgow Farragut unveiled in New York in 1881, was a big success. His fame quickly grew. (source: Saint-Gaudens' official guide, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior)

Perhaps the greatest achievement during this period was the Shaw Memorial (picture shown above), unveiled in Boston in 1897. Described as Saint-Gaudens' "symphony in bronze" this masterpiece took 14 years to complete. This memorial honors the men of the 54th regiment, led by Colonel Shaw.. The 54th regiment, made up of 630 black men, became the war's most famous black regiment because of its dynamic heroism in battle.Augustus Saint-Gaudens wanted each face, in the memorial, to reflect the regiment's fierce determination to win. (source: Footsteps:African American History, 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, January/February 1999)

Saint-Gaudens, one of America's greatest sculptors, became the center of what was to become a dynamic social and creative community lasting more than twenty years. The circle began to expand almost immediately after Saint-Gaudens arrived. A journal entry reflects: "the spring following my arrival, my friend, Mr. T.W. Dewing, the painter came. He saw. He remained. And from that event the colony developed." (Source: The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, edited and amplified by Homer Saint-Gaudens, New York:1913 1: 317-18)

Charles Beaman, New York lawyer, brought art to the Connecticut River's Upper Valley in the late 1800s. His generosity and desire to create a "Little New York" led to establishment of the Cornish Art Colony. The American Renaissance in such arts as sculpture, painting and architecture was in its infancy, arising from the wealth generated in the industrialization that followed the Civil War. Beaman purchased many farms and homes which he would later rent or sell to many of the well-known artists, writers, and performers of the time. He began by urging his friend, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to move to Cornish promising him many "Lincoln shaped men". Saint-Gaudens was, at that time in 1885, preparing for sculpting the now famous "Standing Lincoln". (source: The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, edited and amplified by Homer Saint-Gaudens, New York:1913 1: 317-18)