Frick Art Museum begins a journey into American art

No concentrated interest in American art would be complete without at least a modicum of knowledge of the life and work of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907). So it's only fitting that the exhibition "Augustus Saint-Gaudens: American Sculptor of the Gilded Age," which opens this evening at The Frick Art Museum in Point Breeze, kicks off a spate of newly planned exhibitions at the museum that deal with American art.

"When we think of America in the mid to late 19th century, an image comes to mind and quite likely that image has its origins here in the work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens," says Thomas Smart, director of museum programs at The Frick Art Museum.

Although that might sound like a sweeping statement, the reality is that most Americans are aware of at least a few of the artist's works, even if they don't recognize his name, especially if they've been to New York City. There, a number of his works are landmarks, among them: The Sherman Monument, which stands near the entrance to Central Park across from the Plaza Hotel; and the David Farragut Monument in Madison Square Park. And numismatists will no doubt know of Saint-Gaudens' work from his design of the "Double Eagle," the first United States $20 gold piece, commissioned by President Theodore Roosevelt and issued in 1907.

The former monumental works represent Saint-Gaudens' mastery of the heroic in the grand tradition of Western art, the latter coinage reveals his remarkable skill in effectively achieving realistic representation through subtle nuances of shadow and light.

Fortunately, both abilities are well represented in this exhibition of more than 70 objects -- including full-size sculptures; bronze, marble and plaster reductions; portrait reliefs; cameos and coins -- that effectively constitutes a retrospective of the artist's 30-year career.

A superb craftsmen, teacher, philosopher, poet and organizer of arts expositions, Saint-Gaudens was an enormously influential figure in American art. Prior to the Civil War (1861-65), American artists still looked toward Europe for inspiration and instruction. The dominant style of sculpture in America at the time was neoclassical, which interpreted American subjects in a manner recalling ancient Greek and Roman figurative sculpture.

But Saint-Gaudens changed all of that by effectively creating a new American aesthetic: bringing an extraordinarily crafted naturalism to contemporary subjects that conveyed strong, expressive emotions while still holding fast to classical tradition.

"That's really the hallmark of his work," Smart says. "This very highly refined realistic, naturalistic representation of contemporary and near contemporary subjects."

Born in Dublin, Ireland, and raised in New York City, Saint-Gaudens began his career at the age of 13 as an apprentice cameo-cutter and subsequently studied art at the Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. In 1867, at age 19, he traveled to Paris, and later, Rome, where he studied classical art and architecture and began to work on commissions.

Returning to America in 1875, Saint-Gaudens soon received his first major commission: the aforementioned Farragut Monument, a larger-than-life bronze of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, one of the great heroes of the Civil War.

Although the plaster copy of the bust of Farragut included in this exhibition doesn't convey the grandeur of the monument itself, which has a carved stone base depicting seated female figures, dolphins and waves in what is considered to be one of the first uses of the Art Nouveau style in American sculpture, it still shows the complexity with which Saint-Gaudens was able to portray American heroes, perfectly representing their physical likeness while bringing their personality to life.

The same can be said of the six small portrait studies he made for the Shaw Memorial included in a vitrine not far from the Farragut bust. The Shaw Memorial, which was unveiled on Boston Common in 1897, is considered Saint-Gaudens' masterpiece, but what is equally notable is that it was the first American monument to a group rather than a single figure, and perhaps more importantly, it represents the first time an American sculptor was asked to portray blacks as heroes.

It commemorates Robert Shaw, a white colonel of the union's 54th Massachusetts Regiment, and his men, who were all black volunteers, several of whom were former slaves and some of which, Smart points out, are believed to have been from Pittsburgh.

Although considered "the American Michelangelo," Saint-Gaudens was more like the American Auguste Rodin. Not in style -- although the portraits from the Shaw Memorial have a remarkable similarity to the French sculptor's work -- but in ambition.

Like Rodin (1840-1917), who was the artist's contemporary, Saint-Gaudens also took on a large number of studio assistants and an equally large number of commissions. Many of which, like the aforementioned, were for public spaces.

One such commission was a sculpture of Diana, which once stood atop the tower of Madison Square Garden. A bronze cast of it dominates one of the three galleries that house the exhibition, while all around her, Saint-Gaudens' early works, comprising numerous portraits in bas-relief, either in bronze, plaster or wood with stone and terracotta inlay, fill the walls.

These bas-relief portraits, perhaps more than any other, are what gained Saint-Gaudens' prominence during the Gilded Age -- a term coined by Mark Twain to capture the glory and ostentation of the economic heyday that followed the Civil War.

His portrait reliefs, often compared to the works of the great Renaissance artists, graced some of the most opulent mansions of the time, including the New York home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II. Several of them are included in this exhibition.

Other remarkable portrait reliefs on display include one each of the artists Francis Davis Millet and William Merrit Chase, who were good friends of Saint-Gaudens, and a life-size plaster relief of the novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson, shown propped up in bed with pencil in hand.

In that work, like in all of the bas-reliefs on display, Saint-Gaudens' incredible skill at creating a believable sense of depth in a remarkably shallow surface is all too evident.

"It's a really, really highly refined sensibility," Smart says of Saint Gaudens' abilities in that regard. "You have to be so skilled to understand how light will move across the material in a very shallow surface."

Organized by the Trust for Museum Exhibitions, the majority of works in the show are borrowed from the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in New Hampshire. The Frick is the sixth of 12 scheduled stops nationwide, and its presentation here in Pittsburgh is supported by a generous grant from the Allegheny Foundation.

The book

"Augustus Saint-Gaudens: American Sculptor of the Gilded Age" by Henry J. Duffy & John H. Dryfhout.