A Life in Art: An American Master:Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born March 1, 1848 in Dublin, Ireland, to Bernard Saint-Gaudens, a French shoemaker and Mary McGuinness, his Irish wife. Six months later, the family immigrated to New York City where Augustus grew up. Upon completion of school at age thirteen, he expressed strong interest in art as a career, so his father apprenticed him to a cameo cutter. While working days at his cameo lathe, Augustus also took art classes at the Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design.
At 19, his apprenticeship completed, he traveled to Paris where he studied under Francois Jouffry at the renown Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1870, he left Paris for Rome, where for the next five years, he studied classical art and architecture, and worked on his first commissions. Here, he also met an American art student, Augusta Homer, whom he married in 1877.
In 1876 he received his first major commission; a monument to Civil War Admiral David Glasgow Farragut. Unveiled in New York’s Madison Square in 1881, the monument was a tremendous success; its combination of realism and allegory, a departure from previous American sculpture. Saint-Gaudens’ fame grew, and other commissions were quickly forthcoming.
Saint-Gaudens’ increased prominence allowed him to pursue his strong interest in teaching, something he did steadily from 1888 to 1897. He tutored young artists privately, taught at the Art Students League, and took on a large number of assistants. He was an artistic advisor to the Columbian Exposition of 1893, an avid supporter of the American Academy in Rome, and part of the MacMillan Commission, which made recommendations for the architectural and artistic preservation and improvement of the Nations’s Capital.
He produced enduing and distinctive public sculpture such as the Adams Memorial, the Peter Cooper Monument, and the John A. Logan Monument. Perhaps his greatest achievement during this period, was the Shaw Memorial unveiled on Boston Common in 1897. Described as Saint-Gaudens’ “symphony in bronze,” this masterpiece took fourteen years to complete.
Diagnosed with cancer in 1900, he decided to live in Cornish year round. For the next seven years, despite diminishing energy, he continued to work, producing a steady stream of reliefs and public sculpture.
Saint-Gaudens died in Cornish on August 3, 1907. His wife survived him for nineteen years, and continued to summer at Aspet. In 1919, she and their son, Homer, established the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, an organization dedicated to preserve the place as an historic site. In 1965, the Memorial donated the property to the National Park Service.
Saint-Gaudens in Cornish:
Augustus Saint-Gaudens first came to Cornish in 1885, renting an old inn for the summer from his friend and lawyer, Charles Beaman. He adapted the house to his needs, and converted a hay barn into a studio. He and his family grew to love the place, and purchased it in 1891. He and his family continued to summer here until 1900, when they came to stay full time.
He named the estate “Aspet” after his father’s birthplace in France, and over the years transformed the grounds with gardens, hedges and recreation areas, including a swimming pool, a bowling green and a golf course. The house, built about 1800, was completely remodeled; a graceful, curving stairway with a mezzanine study added off the main hallway, new bedrooms, a sun room, dormers, and a wide, columned porch.
As his popularity increased and commissions poured in, Saint-Gaudens built a large studio where his assistants could work. Saint-Gaudens’ role became like that of an executive producer; he developed the concept and initial models or maquettes for a sculpture, then directed his assistants in completion of the work. In 1904, the large studio burned, with the tragic loss of the sculptor’s correspondence, sketch books, and many works in progress. A redesigned structure named the “Studio of the Caryatids,” was quickly built, but in 1944 it too burned.
Many other well known artists followed Saint-Gaudens to Cornish, forming what became known as the “Cornish Colony.” Included were painters Maxfield Parrish, Thomas Dewing, George Deforest Brush and Kenyon Cox, dramatist Percy MacKaye, the American novelist Winston Churchill, architect, Charles Platt, and sculptors Paul Manship and Louis Saint-Gaudens, Augustus’ brother. The colony of artists made for a dynamic social and creative environment, at the center of which stood Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
In 1905, members of the art colony produced the play, “A Masque of Ours,” at the Site, to honor Saint-Gaudens’ twentieth year in Cornish. The stage set, in the form of a Greek temple, was later recreated in marble, and now marks the final resting place of Saint-Gaudens and his family.
After Saint-Gaudens’ death in 1907, the artist colony gradually dissipated. Aspet remains, however, as a reminder of that community and the work of one of America’s greatest sculptors.
