Daniel Chester French and the sculpture of Augustus Saint-Gaudens - New York Metropolitan Museum

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2000 by Thayer Tolles

French's success in securing works by SaintGaudens for the museum stimulated others to follow suit. A bronze bas-relief of Frank Millet of 1879 was given by his daughter in 1910, and in 1913 Mrs. Edward Robinson, the wife of the museum's director, donated a portrait medal of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) cast in 1880. After considerable prodding, in 1912 Augusta SaintGaudens gave a bronze bas-relief of Samuel Gray Ward (P1. VI), a founder of the museum and its first treasurer. Surviving correspondence suggests that French particularly coveted this relief, which, years earlier, Saint-Gaudens had declared to be among the finest and most technically daring of his bas-reliefs. [10]

The Saint-Gaudens Memorial Committee disbanded in May 1912 after four and a half years of diligent and successful fund-raising. During the next two decades French carried on its objectives, acquiring more fine examples of SaintGaudens's work, from the ethereal winged Amor Caritas of 1880-1898 and Victoty of 1892-1903 to a half-size model of the weather vane Diana of 1892-1893 (see cover), which, at more than life size, dominated the New York City skyline from the top of Madison Square Garden. French assembled the finest and most comprehensive holding of Saint-Gaudens's work outside of the one at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, which was formerly his estate Aspet in Cornish, New Hampshire. Thanks to French's discernment and dedication, and the recent generosity of donors to the American Wing, the museum has thirty-five sculptures by Saint-Gaudens, twenty-one of them acquired by French himself.

THAYER TOLLES is the assistant curator in the department of American paintings and sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

(1.) This article is drawn in part from my introduction, "A History of the Metropolitan Museum's American Sculpture Collection," in Lauretta Dimmick, Donna J. Hassler, and Thayer Tolles, American Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Volume 1. A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born before 1865, ed. Thayer Tolles (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1999), pp. xiii-xxvi. The complete inscriptions on and further information about the sculptures shown in this article can be found in this catalogue. (volume 2 is scheduled for publication this fall.)

(2.) The bronze is in the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire.

(3.) These works are illustrated and discussed in Doreen Bolger Burke, American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume III: A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born between 1846 and 1864 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1980), pp. 179-180 and 394-395, respectively.

(4.) Cited in Morrison H. Heckscher, "The Metropolitan Museum of Art: An Architectural History," Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol.53 (Summer 1995), p.38.

(5.) "Modem American Bronzes," Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 1 (September 1906), p. 129.

(6.) Quoted in "Augustus Saint-Gaudens-Replicas of His Bas-Reliefs of Children," Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 1 (January 1906), p.26.