Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Book excerpt: The sculpture of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), called the American Michelangelo, has often been compared to the magnificent works of the Renaissance. As an advocate of new ideas and a new approach to sculpture, Saint-Gaudens played a preeminent role in developing America's cultural life and revitalizing the art of sculpture in the modern age. (1861-65), when numerous monuments were commissioned to commemorate the national crisis and subsequent unification. In addition, the amassing of private fortunes during the country's unprecedented economic and financial growth led to an interest in sculpture for personal collections. Saint-Gaudens contributed works of both types. His Shaw Memorial (1897), commemorating the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Regiment, the first U.S. Army unit of African Americans, and his Lincoln Monument (1887) are among the most moving of the nation's Civil War monuments, while his Adams Memorial (1891) is one of the most evocative of his privately commissioned works. France and spent eight years in Europe, where he found a freer and bolder form of artistic expression. On his return to the United States in 1875, he used his European training to create a new American style incorporating simplicity of subject, realism of form, and strength of emotion. In addition to his monuments, his works also included interior decoration for some of the great houses of the Gilded Age, portrait reliefs, and medals and U.S. coinage. his and the subsequent generation of American sculptors through his teaching and his lead in establishing organizations for the support and training of American artists, including the Society of American Artists. His legacy, as both artist and educator, is nothing less than the shaping of American culture.