Ïsgnhs Fall/Winter3 2005
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friends OF SAINT-GAUDENS CORNISH I NEW HAMPSHIRE I FALL / WINTER 2010 IN THIS ISSUE AUGUSTUS Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Britain I 1 SAINT-GAUDENS Highlights of New Acquisitions at the Park I 6 AND BRITAIN Special Events Bring Big Crowds to SGNHS I 7 Thayer Tolles Curator, American Paintings and Sculpture The Metropolitan Museum of Art DEAR FRIENDS, On June 20, 1898, John Singer It has been a wonderful season at the Sargent hosted a dinner in honor Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, of Augustus Saint-Gaudens one of the highlights of which was the transfer of Blow-Me-Down Farm to the at London’s Reform Club. National Park Service and the day-long The invited consisted of six celebration there with the community sculptors, four painters, and two in July. (See inside for more details.) writers. For most, it was their first acquaintance with Saint- Gaudens who had relocated from New York to Paris in 1897. Was Sargent’s gesture just another Figure 1. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Jules Bastien-Lepage , 1880, bronze, example of artistic bonhomie or was the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. painter also pushing a larger agenda concerning the presence and patronage of American artists in England? As it turns point to or from the port of Liverpool on out, Saint-Gaudens’s relationship with the way to Paris. One of his better docu - Britain was not a self-fashioned campaign mented visits took place in January 1899 to enhance his reputation, but built through during which he went to see the ballet Blow-Me-Down Farm barn. unsystematic collegial interventions such twice and had meetings with Sargent as this dinner. as well as Sidney Colvin, keeper of prints We would like to extend thanks to all of and drawings at the British Museum our Friends, to those who visit and par - (the former about Sargent’s work for the ticipate in events here, and to those who Saint-Gaudens was wary Boston Public Library, the latter about have a passion for sculpture and the of London. He admired it for its the Robert Louis Stevenson memorial for great work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. “extraordinary impression Edinburgh). Nevertheless, the sculptor’s We appreciate your help in supporting of power and also of order.” description of the visit could well sum up this living historic site and keeping the his overall sentiments towards the city: memory of Saint-Gaudens and the “two of the most miserable days of my life….I roamed around the streets under Cornish Colony alive. Saint-Gaudens’s relationship with England the gloomy sky.” 1 Sincerely, was haphazardly constructed. His period of greatest association with Britain The truth is Saint-Gaudens was wary of Byron Bell Rick Kendall occurred during his three-year tenure in London. He admired it for its “extraordinary PRESIDENT SUPERINTENDENT 2 Saint-Gaudens Saint-Gaudens Paris from 1897 to 1900. Yet throughout impression of power and also of order.” Memorial National Historic Site his career, London was a passing-through And he enjoyed close friendships with (‘ ASG and Britain ...’ continued on page 2 ) friends OF SAINT-GAUDENS 2 British cultural figures, for instance, the actress Ellen Terry, to whom he presented a bronze cast of his portrait of Jules Bastien-Lepage (fig. 1). But his roots and priorities were different from other American artists: he summed it up in his Reminiscences : ‘I hear constantly spoken of […] the love of England that so many of my friends of Anglo-Saxon origin have when they go there for the first time. I have not a trace of it for England, though a great lover of its dignity and beauty, but I have it in a singular way for France.’ 3 Saint-Gaudens showed no sustained Figure 2. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Richard Watson Gilder, Helena de Kay Gilder, and Rodman de Kay Gilder, 1879; this cast, ca. 1883-84, plaster, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, interest in cultivating his career in Britain. Gift of David and Joshua Gilder, 2002. And so his presence in Britain was orchestrated by cultural celebrities who submitted his work to exhibitions and nominated him for honors in their quest Saint-Gaudens’s presence in to spread his name. Britain was orchestrated by cultural celebrities who submitted Richard Watson Gilder his work to exhibitions and and Hamo Thornycroft nominated him for honors in their quest to spread his name. Several case studies of Saint-Gaudens’s interactions with leading British figures demonstrate how he earned inner-circle Princess of Wales, when she visited the recognition. The first was instigated exhibition. Bastien-Lepage, who was the through Saint-Gaudens’s advocate, intermediary between sculptor and royal, Richard Watson Gilder, who launched wrote to Saint-Gaudens that “she the sculptor’s reputation in New York in strongly admired your medallion and the late 1870s in Scribner’s Monthly . asked me your name. She seemed to Gilder spent extended time in London wish to know you and […] also to pos - Figure 3. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Robert Louis in 1878-79, and it was likely he who sess some such little work such as Stevenson , 1887-88; this cast, 1893-94, bronze, encouraged Saint-Gaudens to show his Tate, London. those you have exhibited.” 4 For whatever work at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1880. reason—indifference, geographical con - Saint-Gaudens exhibited six bas-relief straints, or preoccupation with the com - portraits, including those of the Gilder Thornycroft. Among Gilder’s connections pletion of the Farragut Monument , Saint- family (fig. 2) and Bastien-Lepage. Unlike in London was Edmund Gosse, who Gaudens, who returned to New York in the rapturous critical response greeting would become Century’s London agent July 1880, never cultivated a potential Saint-Gaudens in New York, his contri - in 1881. In 1880 Gosse alerted Gilder commission from Princess Alexandra. butions to the Grosvenor show were all that his friend Thornycroft had admired but ignored by the London press. The Grosvenor showing produced at Saint-Gaudens’s work at the Grosvenor. However, Saint-Gaudens’s work appar - least one substantial lasting contact for As their ensuing correspondence con - ently did catch the eye of Alexandra, Saint- Gaudens—the sculptor Hamo firms, Saint-Gaudens and Thornycroft friends OF SAINT-GAUDENS 3 5 shared an admiration of each other’s Robert Louis Stevenson as it is possible to make them.” One sculptures to the extent that they and Sidney Colvin reached him in Samoa in July 1894 short - exchanged photographs. For fifteen ly before his death (presumably the cast years before meeting his American now at the Textile Museum, Washington, Another personal connection, one that confrere at Sargent’s 1898 dinner, D.C.) and the other was given to Sidney led to Saint-Gaudens’s most prestigious Thornycroft loyally observed Saint- Colvin, his editor, and keeper at the artistic production for Britain, was his Gaudens’s devel oping stateside career British Museum. This superlative cast friendship with Scottish-born Robert and promoted his name in England. For (fig. 3), with its personalized inscription Louis Stevenson. Saint-Gaudens greatly instance, in 1888 he asked Saint-Gaudens TO SIDNEY COLVI N, was built into admired Stevenson’s writings and told if he would display his work in London; a wall over a mantelpiece in his house. their mutual friend, the American painter Saint-Gaudens refused, noting he did not Will Low, that if Stevenson ever came to Following Stevenson’s death in 1894, want to exhibit plasters and that he was the United States he would be honored Colvin was largely responsible for Saint- contemplating having his own exhibition to model his portrait. When Stevenson Gaudens earning the coveted commission in New York (this never took place). visited New York in autumn 1887, Low for the writer’s memorial for St. Giles orchestrated their meeting. Stevenson Cathedral in his native Edinburgh. Out of Thornycroft’s enthusiasm ordered two 36-inch replicas of the result - loyalty to Stevenson, Saint-Gaudens continued and he lobbied for ing portrait, “as gilt-edged and high-toned accepted a $5,000 payment at no personal Saint-Gaudens’s election in 1906 as an honorary foreign academician of the Royal Academy. Thornycroft’s enthusiasm continued and he lobbied for Saint-Gaudens’s election in 1906 as an honorary foreign academician of the Royal Academy. Soon thereafter Saint-Gaudens wrote to Thornycroft, a full academician since 1888, that the English sculptor’s involvement in his nomination added to the honor of the distinction. Thornycroft subsequently pressed Saint- Gaudens to display work in the 1906 Royal Academy exhibition, but Saint- Gaudens, gravely ill with intestinal cancer, declined. Thornycroft’s ambitions led him to write later that year reminding Saint- Gaudens of a promise to send a plaster model of the Sherman Monument, then located in Paris, to the next Royal Academy exhibition at Burlington House for installation in the outdoor courtyard. This ambitious scheme never came to Figure 4. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial , 189 9-1903, bronze, pass and Saint-Gaudens died just a few St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. months later, in August 1907. (‘ ASG and Britain ...’ continued on page 4) friends OF SAINT-GAUDENS 4 (‘ ASG and Britain ...’ continued from page 3 ) profit to himself. He did not work inten - interaction between the two artists in sively on the memorial (fig. 4) until 1899, the late 1890s was a work-based one. when he enlarged and revised his original Sargent took advantage of Saint- rectangular composition, replacing the ivy Gaudens’s proximity to tap his expertise border with a garland entwined with for ‘The Dogma of Redemption’ (1890- Scottish heather and native Samoan 1916), part of a mural cycle on the hibiscus.