The Gilded Age in American Art

Evaluation | Curriculum Connections | Resources | Tours 1876 - 1917

Augustus Saint-Gaudens Biography

1848 - Born in Dublin, Ireland, on March 1. His father, Bernard Saint-Gaudens, was a shoemaker from France; his Irish mother, Mary McGuiness, worked in a shoe factory.
1848–1861 - Family immigrates to America to escape potato famine. Father establishes the family in a French-American community in New York City, where he builds a shoemaking business catering to wealthy clients.
1861–1867 - Augustus takes an apprenticeship in the studio of a French cameo cutter. From age thirteen to nineteen he works preparing stones, cutting and polishing background, and occasionally carving cameos. This experience gives Saint-Gaudens a source of expression that sustained him throughout his career.
1867–1870 - Travels to Paris for a formal art education at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Takes courses in anatomy, life drawing, sculpture modeling, and ornamental design, and makes casts of ancient sculpture.
1870–1875 - Forced to Rome during the France-Prussian War, where he establishes a studio and meets other artists. Acquires a few wealthy patrons for whom he made neoclassically styled portrait heads. Meets future wife, Augusta Homer, a distant cousin of the American painter Winslow Homer.
1875–1880 - Returns to New York City and collaborates with architects Stanford White, Charles Follen McKim, and Henry Hobson Richardson, as well as the painter John LaFarge on several decorative projects. Begins to make the bronze reliefs that would become the mainstay of his work and steadily attract clients for the rest of his life.
1880 - Receives first public commission, for the monument to Civil War naval hero Admiral David Glasgow Farragut. The Farragut Monument wins him praise in Paris and New York and secures him further commissions.
1880–1885 - Works on decorative projects for the Vanderbilt and Villard mansions in New York.
1884–1896 - Creates The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial. The large bronze relief of the first African-American regiment organized in the North during the Civil War combines relief sculpture with a nearly freestanding equestrian figure. Between 1881 and 1907 Saint-Gaudesn created six monumental bronze sculptures in honor of Civil War events: Farragut Monument, 1881, Madison Square Park, New York; Standing Abraham Lincoln, 1887, Chicago; Shaw Memorial, 1897, Boston; General Logan, 1897, Chicago; Sherman Monument, 1903, New York; Seated Abraham Lincoln, 1907, Chicago.
1885 - Works on the Standing Lincoln memorial to Abraham Lincoln. He was inspired by the memory of his parents crying over news of the Lincoln's assassination.
1886 - Hired by writer Henry Adams to create a memorial sculpture for Adams' wife, Marian, who committed suicide. The Adams Memorial was completed in 1891, and is located in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
1888–1897 - Faculty member at the Art Students League in New York City. He emphasizes drawing in charcoal and understanding anatomy.
1897–1907 - Works steadily for the next decade at his home and studio in Cornish, New Hampshire, with the help of his brother Louis and artist Frederick MacMonnies.
1907 - Dies in Cornish on August 7.