Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Regiment National Gallery of Art The Shaw Memorial Project is made possible by the generous support of The Circle of the National Gallery of Art 1 On July 18, 1863, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw The Sculptor was killed while leading the Massachusetts Born March 1, 1848, Augustus Saint-Gaudens Fifty-fourth Volun teer Infantry in a bloody (fig. 2) was brought to the United States assault on Fort Wagner, near Charleston, from Ireland as an infant. His mother, Mary South Carolina. Although nearly half of the McGuin­­ness, and his father, Bernard Saint- regiment fell and was badly defeated, the Gaudens, a French man, settled in New York battle proved to be an event of poignant where Bernard began a shoemaking busi- and powerful symbolic significance, as ness. At thirteen Saint-Gaudens received his the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth was one first training in sculpture in the workshop of the first African-American units of the of a French-born cameo-cutter, and he later Civil War. It would take nearly thirty-four attended drawing classes at the Cooper years of public concern and more than a Union School and the National Academy decade of devotion by America’s foremost of Design. sculptor to create a fitting memorial to In 1867 Saint-Gaudens went to Paris, the sacrifice of these brave men (fig. 1). where he supported himself by making The result is the finest achievement of cameos and copies of famous sculpture. Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ career, and He enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts arguably the greatest American sculpture and, in museums, was exposed for the first of the nineteenth century. time to European art of every age. At the 1. Shaw Memorial as installed at the National Gallery of Art 3 nation of imposing realism and lofty ideal- ism, the monument portrays the steely-eyed admiral David Glasgow Farragut, hero of the battles of New Orleans and Mobile Bay. 2 With his coat flapping in the sea breeze, onset of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 the admiral strides across an elegant base Saint-Gaudens left Paris for Rome, where carved in low relief with the alle gorical he lived for five years. There he acquired figures of Hope and Loyalty. It was erected a profound knowledge of classical and in Madison Square Park, then one of New Renaissance sculpture. He was particularly York’s major public spaces, in 1881. The taken with the clarity and naturalism of visibility and success of the Farragut memo- fifteenth-century Italian relief, an influence rial proved Saint-Gaudens’ talent for public that found its way into his own low-relief monuments, and he became the obvious portraits. In Rome, Saint-Gaudens estab- choice for sculptor of the Robert Gould lished himself as a professional sculptor and Shaw memorial. received commissions for portrait busts. Of In the aftermath of the Civil War, there the more than two hundred commissions was unprecedented interest in the United that he completed during his career, nearly States in honoring its heroes through the three-quarters were portraits. public and permanent medium of sculp- In 1875 Saint-Gaudens returned to New ture. After accepting the Shaw commission York, where he worked for Tiffany Studios in 1884, and while his ideas about its form and became one of a team of artists who were evolving, Saint-Gaudens produced a executed the decoration for H. H. Rich- succession of other major pieces, includ- ardson’s Trinity Church in Boston under ing the dignified standing figureAbraham the supervision of John La Farge. His first Lincoln (1884 – 1887, Chicago) and the major commission, and the earliest of his equestrian monuments to Generals Logan Civil War–related subjects, was the Farragut (1897, Chicago) and Sherman (1892 – 1903, Monument (fig. 3), for which the architect New York). In addition to these heroic pub- Stanford White designed the base. A combi - lic works, the sculptor created the graceful 2. Augustus Saint- 3. Farragut Monument, Collections, National Gaudens, 1905 1881, bronze and Gallery of Art Library granite, New York City. Gramstorff Archive, Department of Image Diana figure (1886, Philadelphia Museum of Art) that topped the tower of Madison Square Garden in New York and the Adams Memorial (1886 – 1891, Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, dc), with its hauntingly poetic and mysterious hooded figure. In 1885 Saint-Gaudens purchased a house and barn in Cornish, New Hamp- shire, now the Saint-Gaudens National His- toric Site. In subsequent years he was joined there by the artists Thomas Wilmer Dewing, George de Forest Brush, and Maxfield Par- rish, among others, establishing an impor- tant artistic and literary colony in the area. Saint-Gaudens’ career thrived through- out the 1890s. He produced numerous replicas and reductions of some of his best- 4 known work, such as the relief of the reclin- ing figure of Robert Louis Stevenson. With the first nor the only one. The First Kansas many other artists, he worked on the deco- Colored was formed in August 1862, and ration for the World’s Columbian Exposition by November of that year Colonel Thomas in Chicago in 1893. When the McMillan Higginson had mustered the First South Plan for the Improvement of Washington, Carolina Volunteers. Official government dc, was adopted in 1901, he served as a con- support of the call to arms for black troops, sultant to the Board of Public Buildings. In however, did not come until shortly after 1905, at the request of President Theodore Lincoln’s issuance of the Eman cipa tion Roosevelt, he redesigned the United States Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Within coinage. Despite increasing ill health, Saint- a few weeks, Secretary of War Edwin Gaudens actively supervised numerous Stanton authorized Governor John Andrew projects until his death on August 3, 1907. of Massa chusetts to raise the first African- No other American sculptor of the post– American corps in the North. Civil War era had approached his success Because Massachusetts had only a small in creating the grand and moving public African-American population from which monuments to the nation’s heroes, as well to recruit, efforts were made to enlist men as penetrating portraits of many figures of from all the northeastern states (fig. 4). America’s Gilded Age. Most recruits were free blacks. Some came from as far as Canada. Frederick Douglass, Robert Gould Shaw and whose sons Charles and Lewis signed on the Massachusetts with the Fifty-fourth, exhorted young men Fifty-fourth Regiment to give themselves to the cause. His inspira- The Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Volunteer tional appeal, “Men of Color, To Arms!” was Infantry is the most famous Civil War unit widely circulated and was instrumental in of African Americans, but it was neither filling Union ranks. 4. Recruiting broadside, 1863, Massachusetts Historical Society writers, and reformers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Lloyd Garrison, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. From 1856 until March 1859 Shaw attended Harvard University, but he withdrew before receiving his degree, entering his uncle’s business in New York instead. After Lin- coln’s election and the secession of several southern states, Shaw joined the Seventh New York Regiment and marched with it to the defense of Washington in April 1861. The unit served only thirty days, but in the army Shaw had at last found a vocation that commanded his enthusiasm and respect. In May he joined the Second Massachusetts Infantry as first lieutenant. 5 During nearly two years of service in the Second, in which he rose to the rank of Aware of the importance of the success captain, Shaw was wounded at Antietam of the regiment in a climate of great skepti- and saw some of his closest comrades fall in cism, the staunchly abolitionist governor battle. But his resolve grew only firmer with chose its officers from prominent Boston each fight. In February 1863, Francis Shaw families with strong antislavery convictions, personally delivered Governor Andrew’s families that would lend moral as well as offer of command of the new Massachusetts financial support to the endeavor. Although Fifty-fourth Regiment to his son, then at members of the African-American commu- Stafford Court House, Virginia. Not certain nity objected to the army’s practice of allow- he was “equal to the responsibility of such ing only white officers, the long-awaited a position,” and no doubt reluctant to leave opportunity to fight for the destruction of the regiment to which he was devoted, slavery and the hope of being acknowledged Shaw at first declined the offer. But his as full citizens overcame the reservations strong sense of duty prevailed. “Now,” his of many. mother wrote after he had accepted the For the colonel of the new regiment post, “I feel ready to die, for I see you will- Governor Andrew and his advisers chose ing to give y[ou]r support to the cause of Robert Gould Shaw, a young Bostonian with truth that is lying crushed and bleeding.” 1 impeccable family connections, strongly Although Shaw supported the idea of abolitionist parents, and substantive battle blacks in the military, his connection with experience (fig. 5). Shaw, born on October African Americans had been more theo- 10, 1837, was the only son of Francis Gould retical than actual, and he seems, at first, and Sarah Sturgis Shaw. Socially conscious to have been surprised by the soldiering and deeply devoted to intellectual and spiri- abilities of his enlistees. The men’s accounts tual pursuits, the Shaws counted among reveal that the respect and understanding their friends and associates such thinkers, between this very demanding commander 5.