Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Born 1848 in Dublin, Ireland
Died 1907 in Cornish, New Hampshire

Sculptor of over 200 works in marble and bronze, Augustus Saint-Gaudens had an international reputation and clientele for his portrait reliefs, decorative projects, and public monuments. His long career in New York, Paris, and Rome began as an apprentice to a cameo maker, and ended with a request from the president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, to design gold coins for the nation. In between these landmarks -- humble and exalted -- lay Saint-Gaudens' life as a sculptor of portraits, memorials, and architectural decorations. He was inspired by the golden age of Renaissance bronze statuary, committed to the overall relationships of architecture, design, and sculpture advocated by the Aesthetic Movement, and blessed by a personal genius for painstakingly researched yet astoundingly fluid imagery.

Kenyon Cox, Augustus Saint-Gaudens in His Studio in 1887, 1908, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Friends of the Sculptor (through August F. Jaccaci) (08.130) © 1985 The Metropolitan Museum of Art