A Visit to Aspet

One of the most famous of the Saint-Gau­dens’ sculp­tures is of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, a white com­man­der, lead­ing the all-black 54th Mass­a­chu­setts regiment.
By Paul Chouinard, Pres­i­dent of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society
 
On Sun­day, July 12th, Bernadette and I, along with friends, ven­tured south along the Con­necti­cut Riv­er to Wind­sor, VT where we crossed the Con­necti­cut over VT’s longest cov­ered bridge. Our des­ti­na­tion was the Saint-Gau­dens estate, Aspet. This Nation­al His­toric Site is locat­ed in Cor­nish, N.H. on Route 12A. Our plan was to enjoy a pic­nic on the lawn of the estate, locat­ed on a hill, high above the Con­necti­cut Riv­er, over­look­ing Mount Ascut­ney in the dis­tance. We enjoyed our pic­nic while lis­ten­ing to a cham­ber con­cert by Rogers & Mil­li­can per­form­ing the music of Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel. The mag­nif­i­cent peren­ni­al gar­dens and the sounds of nature pro­vid­ed a per­fect atmosphere.
 

Augus­tus Saint-Gau­dens, some­times known as the Amer­i­can Michelan­ge­lo, was among the fore­most sculp­tors of the late nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. He arrived in Cor­nish in 1885. He rent­ed an old inn for the sum­mer and over time he adapt­ed the house to his needs and con­vert­ed the barn into a stu­dio. He ulti­mate­ly pur­chased the prop­er­ty and con­tin­ued to sum­mer there until 1892, when it became his year-round home. Over the years he trans­formed the prop­er­ty into a cen­ter for artists and intel­lec­tu­als of the peri­od, who formed what has become known as the “Cor­nish Colony.” The Colony includ­ed: painters Max­field Par­rish, Thomas Dew­ing, George de For­est Bush, Lucia Fuller, and Keny­on Cox; drama­tist Per­cy Mac-Kaye; Amer­i­can nov­el­ist Win­ston Churchill; archi­tect Charles Platt; and sculp­tors Paul Man­ship, Her­bert Adams, and Louis Saint- Gau­dens, broth­er of Augus­tus. They cre­at­ed a dynam­ic social envi­ron­ment, cen­tered around Saint-Gaudens.

August Saint-Gau­dens was born March 1, 1848 in Dublin, Ire­land, to a French shoe­mak­er and his Irish wife. Six months fol­low­ing his birth, the fam­i­ly immi­grat­ed to New York City, where Augus­tus grew up. After com­plet­ing school at age 13, he pur­sued his inter­est in art as a career and was appren­ticed to a cameo cut­ter. While work­ing days as at his cameo lathe, Augus­tus attend­ed art class­es at New York’s Coop­er Union and the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Design. At 19, he com­plet­ed his appren­tice­ship and trav­eled to Paris, in pur­suit of becom­ing a sculp­tor, where he stud­ied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1870 he left Paris for Rome where he stud­ied clas­si­cal art and archi­tec­ture for the next five years. While in Rome, he met an Amer­i­can art stu­dent, Augus­ta Homer, whom he lat­er married.

Fol­low­ing the Civ­il War, many artists received com­mis­sions to memo­ri­al­ize impor­tant events of the war and its heroes. Among Saint-Gau­dens’ diverse works, his great­est lega­cy may be his pub­lic mon­u­ments, five of which are ded­i­cat­ed to heroes of the Civ­il War.

In 1876 Saint-Gau­dens received his first major com­mis­sion: a mon­u­ment to Civ­il War Adm. David Glas­gow Far­ragut. Far­ragut had gained fame for his com­mand of the Fed­er­al Fleet in the bat­tle of Mobile Bay, August 5, 1864, in which he defeat­ed the Con­fed­er­ate fleet Com­mand­ed by Adm. Franklin Buchanan. Unveiled in New York City in 1881, the Far­ragut mon­u­ment was a tremen­dous suc­cess; its com­bi­na­tion of real­ism and alle­go­ry marked 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 in New York City and took on a large num­ber of assistants.

Saint-Gau­dens’ oth­er Civ­il War Com­mis­sions include his eques­tri­an mon­u­ment to Gen­er­al William Tecum­seh Sher­man in New York’s Cen­tral Park. Sher­man com­mand­ed Fed­er­al forces in a famed march from Atlanta to Savan­nah in 1864 in which he prac­ticed a scorched earth pol­i­cy. This mon­u­ment includes real­ism and ide­al­ism with winged Vic­to­ry lead­ing a res­olute Sher­man on his march to the sea.

Saint-Gau­dens’ “Stand­ing Lin­coln” in Lin­coln Park in Chica­go is one of the finest rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the Civ­il War Pres­i­dent. Fol­low­ing Saint-Gau­dens’ death, one of his stu­dents, Daniel Chester French, who stud­ied under him at the Arts Stu­dents League, would ulti­mate­ly be com­mis­sioned to cre­ate the sculp­ture of Lin­coln for the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Per­haps Saint-Gau­dens’ great­est achieve­ment of his Civ­il War com­mis­sions was the Shaw Memo­r­i­al described as a “sym­pho­ny in bronze,” which took 14 years to com­plete. This mon­u­ment, locat­ed on Boston Com­mon, depicts Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, a white com­man­der, lead­ing the 54th Mass­a­chu­setts reg­i­ment, made up of black sol­diers, in their attack on Fort Wag­n­er, Charleston Har­bor, South Car­oli­na on July 18, 1863. Colonel Shaw and many of his reg­i­ment were killed in the assault. The affect por­trayed in the faces of the sol­diers depicts their ded­i­ca­tion and deter­mi­na­tion to make the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice to erad­i­cate the oppres­sion suf­fered by gen­er­a­tions of slaves who had toiled in the South.

Saint-Gau­dens is also well known for his medals and coins. He did com­mem­o­ra­tive medals for the Cen­ten­ni­al of George Washington’s inau­gu­ra­tion in 1889, the World’s Columbian Expo­si­tion in Chica­go in 1893 and the Theodore Roo­sevelt Inau­gur­al medal in 1905. Saint-Gau­dens designed three coins for the U.S. Mint: the one cent Indi­an Head pen­ny and the 10 and 20 dol­lar gold pieces.

Among Saint-Gau­dens’ achieve­ments are his por­trait reliefs. Con­sid­ered the most com­pli­cat­ed and dif­fi­cult type of sculp­ture bas-relief (low relief) has been com­pared to “draw­ing in clay.”

A vis­it to Saint-Gau­dens’ Aspet offers many rewards. There are the mag­nif­i­cent peren­ni­al and sculp­ture gar­dens to enjoy while lis­ten­ing to beau­ti­ful music on Sun­days, at 2:00 PM, through­out July and August. In addi­tion one may tour his home and stu­dio as well as the New Gallery & Atri­um. The entrance fee is $5 per per­son, chil­dren age 15 and under are free. There is no charge for the con­certs. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion: Saint-Gau­dens Memo­r­i­al www.sgnhs.org.

To see more pho­tos relat­ed to this arti­cle, click here.

 

Share