SAINT GAUDENS, THE MASTER

GRIEF, BY SAINT GAUDENS

This mysterious figure is sometimes called “Death,” or “The Peace of God.” It is in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, and is a memorial to Mrs. Adams.

Augustus Saint Gaudens, like so many of our best citizens, was a product of another land; of two others, in fact. Born in Dublin in 1848 of a French father and an Irish mother, he represented an unusually fortunate combination of two artistic races. The humble family settled in 1850 in New York, where the boy was early apprenticed to a cameo cutter, supplementing his childish efforts with a rigorous training in the drawing classes of Cooper Union. In 1880, after some years abroad, he exhibited at the Salon his remarkable figure of Admiral Farragut, now in Madison Square, New York, which still remains one of his finest works. This statue—and its harmonious pedestal—met with instant success, and was followed by a series of triumphant works, so novel and original, so significant and admirably perfected, that the master’s position at the head of the profession in this country was constantly reaffirmed to the day of his death.

DEACON CHAPIN, BY SAINT GAUDENS

At Springfield, Massachusetts.

Indeed, in reviewing the life of this great artist, one asks what other sculptor of modern times has produced such a succession of notable achievements as the “Farragut”; the “Lincoln” of Chicago; the “Deacon Chapin” of Springfield, Massachusetts; the “Adams Memorial” in Washington; the “Shaw Memorial”; the “Logan”; the “Sherman”, and finally the seated “Lincoln.” Add to this the countless exquisite medallions, the delightfully decorative high relief portraits, and, perhaps most beautiful of all, that angelic brood of which the “Amor Caritas” is the type and culmination, and where shall we look for a more individual expression? Rodin himself, with all his contortions, has not produced so much beauty nor demonstrated himself more “original.”

AUGUSTUS SAINT GAUDENS IN HIS STUDIO

From a painting by Kenyon Cox.

To different moods these great works make their differing appeals. The heroic “Lincoln,” with its strong, gaunt frame and its majestic head bowed in sympathetic tenderness; the sturdy “Chapin,” wrapped in a voluminous cloak and self sufficiency; the mysterious, inscrutable genius of the Adams tomb; the rhythmic momentum of the colored regiment with its fated leader riding serenely, square shouldered, and level eyed to his doom; the glorious “Victory” of the Sherman group, the most spiritual, most ethereal of all sculptured types,—what an array are these! What wealth to have brought to our national ideals!