_Copyright, 1908, by The S. S. McClure Co. All rights reserved_
These familiar letters from Augustus Saint-Gaudens show the artist as
his intimate friends knew him. They were written at odd moments, often
in haste, and never with a shadow of self-consciousness. They are
interesting, not as literary productions, but as the simple record of a
critical period in his career.
"Le Coeur au Métier," the motto which he wished to place in his studio,
will be seen to express the spirit of his life. Other keen interests
he had, but they were never allowed to interfere with his work, and
he seldom felt the need of any recreation apart from it. One of his
friends used to complain that in the midst of their merrymaking an
abstracted look would come into his eyes and his mind would hark
back to sculpture. Although he was extremely modest and was given to
underrating his powers in other directions, from his childhood he
confidently expected to be a great artist. As a little school-boy, sent
from his father's shop to do errands, he would sit in the omnibus and
look about at his well-dressed fellow-passengers, and wonder what they
would think if they realized what he was going to be some day. But even
as a child he never dreamed of achieving his ambition without years of
ceaseless struggle.
When the boy left school, at the age of thirteen, this struggle began.
In 1848 his father, a Frenchman, had brought his Irish wife and his
baby, Augustus, to New York, where he worked as a shoemaker. He was
poor, and was anxious that his eldest son should become self-supporting
as soon as possible; so at thirteen the boy was apprenticed to a
cameo-cutter, whose trade he mastered with surprising readiness, at the
same time studying drawing at the Cooper Institute in the evenings. In
a little while he was not only earning his own living by cameo-cutting,
but excelled all his fellow-pupils at the night-school in talent and
perseverance.
[Illustration: AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS FROM A PHOTOGRAPH IN THE
COLLECTION OF MRS. ROSE NICHOLS]
Saint-Gaudens' artistic education was completed in Europe, where he
went at the age of eighteen and stayed almost continuously for nearly
fourteen years. His father sent him first to Paris. There his progress
in the art schools was marked, although he continued to support himself
by his trade, and could give only half his time to sculpture. At the
outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War he reluctantly refrained from
enlisting in the French army and left for Italy. It was in Rome that
he first found sculpture remunerative, and finally was able to drop
cameo-cutting. The years from 1866 to 1880, which he spent in Rome and
Paris, with only occasional visits to America, were singularly happy
ones, characterized by a capacity for continuous work at a high pitch
of excellence.
The letters from Saint-Gaudens printed here were written eighteen
years later, when the sculptor had come into full possession of his
genius. They cover a most critical period in his career, and record
his greatest artistic triumph--his recognition in France as one of the
foremost of modern sculptors. After he returned to the United States
in 1880 he lived and worked in New York, and by 1897 had built up a
national reputation. His work was progressing under the most favorable
conditions, with the encouragement of an ever-increasing circle of
friends and admirers. On the other hand, in France, his father's
country, where he himself had been educated, his work was practically
unknown. A few of his former comrades at the Beaux-Arts, judging his
sculpture from photographs, did not hesitate to tell Saint-Gaudens
that it had been over-praised in America and would obtain no such
appreciation in France. The sculptor felt that, in order to learn
his own deficiencies and to find out where he really stood among his
contemporaries, he must return to Paris, exhibit at the Salon, and run
the gauntlet of the best critics. All his friends on both sides of the
water discouraged him from taking this step, and he himself dreaded it;
but he believed that, in justice to himself and to his work, he must
make this venture.
After his decision was made, however, his departure had to be postponed
until various duties were fulfilled. The Shaw and Logan monuments had
first to be completed and unveiled, and a number of smaller commissions
had to be executed. From the beginning of his work upon the Shaw
memorial there had been bitter opposition upon the part of his friends
to the symbolical figure hovering above Colonel Shaw and his men, but
the sculptor clung to his original conception with great tenacity.
Saint-Gaudens' best friend, Bion, a Parisian sculptor and critic, whose
opinion he valued highly, had never liked the idea of this figure.
Just before Bion's death he received a photograph of the monument as
finished in the clay, and he wrote a long letter to Saint-Gaudens,
complaining that the angel was as superfluous as a figure of Simplicity
would be, floating in the air above the bent figures in Millet's
"Gleaners," and concluding: "I had no need of your 'nom de Dieu'
allegory on the ceiling. Your negroes marching in step and your Colonel
leading them told me enough. Your priestess merely bores me as she
tries to impress upon me the beauty of their action."
[Illustration: CARYATID FOR THE VANDERBILT HOUSE]
Concerning this letter of Bion's, Saint-Gaudens wrote:
"The Players, New York, Jan. 26th, 1897
"Dear ----
"I meant to write you at length tonight but I started with a
letter to Bion which has kept me busy till now, 11 P.M. It is in
reply to the one from him that I enclose, in which at the end he
says a word of you.
"I am not disturbed by his dislike of my figure. It is because
it does not look well in the photograph. If the figure in itself
looked well, he would have liked it, I know, and notwithstanding
his admirable comparison with the Millet I still think that a
figure, if well done in that relation to the rest of the scheme,
is a fine thing to do. The Greeks and Romans did it finely in
their sculpture. After all it's the way the thing's done that
makes it right or wrong, that's about the only creed I have in
art. However his letter is interesting, although very sad, dear
old boy.
[Illustration: DETAIL FROM THE SHAW MEMORIAL, SHOWING THE ALLEGORICAL
FIGURE FULL FACE, AS IN THE FIRST DESIGN]
[Illustration: _Copley print, copyrighted by Curtis and Cameron_
DETAIL FROM THE SHAW MEMORIAL, SHOWING THE ALLEGORICAL FIGURE WITH THE
HEAD TURNED MORE IN PROFILE, AS IN THE FINAL EXECUTION]
"All of the Shaw is out of the studio. They cast the Logan on
Monday and I am working like the devil on the Sherman. I've found
precisely the model I wished, just his size, the same pose of the
head and the same thinness; a Milanese peasant who poses like a
rock. Next week I commence the nude of the Victory from a South
Carolinian girl with a figure like a goddess.
"Affectionately yours
A. ST.-G."
Bion died shortly after writing his objections to the allegorical
figure, and if anything could have changed Saint-Gaudens' decision
regarding his composition of the Shaw monument, his friend's letter
would certainly have done so. Although Saint-Gaudens and Bion had
studied sculpture together at the Beaux-Arts in their youth, it was
not until years afterward that, through a constant interchange of
letters, their relation became a close one. Bion gave up sculpture as
a profession, and devoted himself to friendship and philosophy. He
dropped into the studios of a few intimates every day, frequented art
exhibitions, and attended lectures upon philosophy and psychology at
the Sorbonne or the Collège de France; but the long letters which he
used to write Saint-Gaudens every week became more and more the chief
business of his life. He kept his friend informed as to what was going
on in Paris; of the doings of their little circle of acquaintances; and
wrote him detailed descriptions of all important events in the world
of art, besides giving him a great deal of disinterested advice upon
every conceivable subject, including his work and the conduct of his
life. Saint-Gaudens used to reply at great length, but his letters were
destroyed, according to directions left in his friend's will. When the
news of Bion's death reached Saint-Gaudens, he wrote:
"148 W. 36th St., Feb. 17th, 1897
"Of course the one thing on my mind, the terrible spectre that
looms up, is poor Bion's death; night and day, at all moments, it
comes over me like a wave that overwhelms me, and it takes away
all heart that I may have in anything. Today, however, I have had
a kind of sad feeling of companionship with him, that seems to
bring him to me, in working over the head of the flying figure of
the Shaw. The bronze founders are not ready for it yet. I have had
a stamp made of the figure and have helped it a great deal, I am
sure you will think. You know that Thayer told me he thought an
idea I once had of turning the head more profile, was a better one
than that I had evolved, and I've always wished to do it. It is
done, and it's the feeling of death and mystery and love in the
making of it that brought my friend back to me so much today....
But the young, thank Heaven, do not feel these blows so profoundly
as do older people. In one of my blue fits the other day I felt
the end of all things, and reasoning from one thing to the other
and about the hopelessness of trying to fathom what it all means,
I reached this: that we know nothing, (of course) but a deep
conviction came over me like a flash that at the bottom of it all,
whatever it is, the mystery must be beneficent. It does not seem
as if the bottom of all were something malevolent; and the thought
was a great comfort.
[Illustration: _Copley print, copyrighted by Curtis and Cameron_