Augustus Saint-Gaudens - Civil War Commemorative Commissions

Civil War Commemorative Commissions

In 1876, Saint-Gaudens received his first major commission: a monument to Civil War Admiral David Farragut, in New York's Madison Square; his friend Stanford White designed an architectural setting for it, and when it was unveiled in 1881, its naturalism, its lack of bombast and its siting combined to make it a tremendous success, and Saint-Gaudens' reputation was established.

The commissions followed fast, including the colossal Standing Lincoln in Lincoln Park, Chicago in a setting by architect White, 1884–1887, considered the finest portrait statue in the United States (a replica was placed at Lincoln's tomb in Springfield, Illinois, and another stands in London, facing Parliament Square), and a long series of funerary monuments and busts, including the Adams Memorial, the Peter Cooper Monument, and the John A. Logan Monument.

Arguably the greatest of these funerary monuments is the bronze bas-relief that forms the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on Boston Common, 1884–1897, which Saint-Gaudens labored on for 14 years; even after the public version had been unveiled, he continued with further versions. Two grand equestrian monuments to Civil War generals are outstanding: to General John A. Logan, atop a tumulus in Chicago, 1894–1897, and to General William Tecumseh Sherman at the corner of Central Park in New York, 1892–1903, the first use of Robert Treat Paine's pointing device for the accurate mechanical enlargement of sculpture models. The depictions of the African-American soldiers on the memorial is noted as a rare example of true-to-life, non-derogatory, depictions of Afro-ancestral physical characteristics in 19th Century American art.

For the Lincoln Centennial in 1909, Saint-Gaudens produced another statue of the president. A seated figure, Abraham Lincoln: The Head of State, is in Chicago's Grant Park. The statues head was used for the commemorative postage stamp issued on the 100th anniversary of Lincoln's birth.