AUGUSTUS American sculptor, was born in Dublin, Ireland, on March 1, 1848, the son of a French father, a shoemaker by trade, and an Irish mother, and was taken to America in infancy. He was apprenticed to a cameo-cutter, studying in the schools of Cooper Union 0860 and the National Academy of Design, New York (1865-1866).
His earliest work in sculpture, made upon the eve of his departure, in 1868, for Paris, was a bronze bust of his father, Bernard P. E.
Saint-Gaudens. After some delay he was admitted as a pupil of Jouffroy in l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and two years later, with his fellow-student Mercie, he went to Italy, where he remained three years. While in Rome he executed his statues "Hiawatha" and "Silence." Returning in 1873 to New York he made, the fol lowing year, an admirable bust of the statesman, William M.
Evarts, and was commissioned by John La Farge to execute a relief of adoring angels for St. Thomas' Episcopal Church, New York, a work which immediately won the esteem of his brother artists. The church was destroyed by fire a few years later. His statue of Admiral Farragut, Madison Square, New York, was ordered in 1876, exhibited at the Paris salon of 188o and unveiled in 1881. It was received with enthusiasm and from its first ap pearance Saint-Gaudens was recognized as a new leader in his art. To this period also belong the "Randall" of the "Sailors' Snug Harbour," Staten Island, and the beautiful caryatides for the Vanderbilt fireplace, preserved in the Metropolitan Museum. At all times throughout his life the sculptor found diversion from more serious tasks in modelling portraits of friends in low relief. Among these we may note the medallions and placques of Bastien-Lepage and Dr. Henry Shiff (188o) ; Homer Saint-Gau dens and the children of Prescott Hall Butler (1881) ; Mrs. Stan ford White (1884) ; Robert Louis Stevenson (1887) ; William M.
Chase and the children of Jacob H. Schiff (1888) ; Kenyon Cox (1889), etc. Yet another form of sculpture was developed in his high-reliefs of Dr. Henry Bellows (1885) and Dr. McCosh (1889) ; and the lovely "Amor Caritas," which, with variations, long occu pied his mind. His noble statue of Lincoln was unveiled in 1887 in Lincoln park, Chicago, and was at once accepted as the country's ideal. In Springfield, Mass., his unique "Deacon Chapin," known as "The Puritan," appeared also in 1887. The Adams memorial (1891) in Rock Creek cemetery, Washington, D.C., is considered by many to be Saint-Gaudens' greatest work; indeed not a few rate it as America's highest artistic achievement. The mysterious draped figure with shadowed face is often called "Grief," but the sculptor had no such intention ; "Peace" or "Nirvana" better convey the meaning. The Garfield memorial in Fairmount park,
Philadelphia, was completed in 1895. The Shaw memorial in Boston, a monument to Robert G. Shaw, colonel of a negro regi ment in the Civil War, was begun in 1884 and occupied the mas ter intermittently for more than years, being dedicated in 1897. It is a large relief in bronze, measuring some 15 by 11 ft., and con taining many marching soldiers, led by their young officer on horse back. The year '1897 saw likewise the completion of the "Logan" on a fiery steed, in Grant park, Chicago.
Another famous equestrian statue is the "General Sherman" which was begun in 1892 and dedicated in 1903. Standing at the entrance of Central park at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, New York, this golden group of the mounted commander led by a beautiful winged "Victory" is one of the most impressive of the city's monuments. The "Sherman" was shown with other works of Saint-Gaudens at the Paris Exposition of 1900, receiving there the highest honours. The sculptor was made an officer of the Legion of Honour and corresponding member of the Institute of France. A bronze copy of his "Amor Caritas" was purchased by the French Government. Other important works are the Peter Cooper memorial, New York; the "Parnell," in Dublin; the Phillips Brooks monument in Boston and a fine seated figure of Lincoln, recently erected on Chicago's lake front. Saint-Gaudens died at Cornish, N.H., on Aug. 3, 1907. He is rightly regarded as America's greatest sculptor and his work continues to exert a powerful and beneficent influence in the United States. In 1877 he married Augusta F. Homer and left a son, Homer Saint-Gau dens, now director of fine arts of the Carnegie Institute, Pitts burgh, Pa. His brother Louis (1854-1913) also a sculptor, assisted Augustus Saint-Gaudens in some of his creations.
See Royal Cortissoz, Augustus Saint-Gaudens (19°7) ; Lorado Taft, History of American Sculpture (1903) and Modern Tendencies in Sculpture (1921) ; Kenyon Cox, Old Masters and New (1905) ; C. Lewis Hind, Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1908) ; Homer Saint-Gaudens, The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1913). ( L. T.) ST. GAUDENS, a town of France, capital of an arrondisse 0 ment in the department of Haute-Garonne, I m. from the river Garonne, 57 m. S.S.W. of Toulouse, on the railway to Tarbes. Pop. (1931) 4,462. St. Gaudens derives its name from a martyr of the 5th century, at whose tomb a college of canons was estab lished. It was important as capital of the Nebouzan, as the resi dence of the bishops of Comminges and for its cloth industry. The church, once collegiate, dates chiefly from the iith and 12th centuries, but the main entrance is flamboyant Gothic.