Saint Godens, Augustus

Saint-Godens was the son of a Frenchman, a descendant, of Huguenot descent, and Irish . When the boy was six months old, the family moved to the United States. Grew up in New York . In 1861, Saint-Gaudens enrolled as a cameo carver and, in parallel, attended the Cooper Association's Arts and Sciences distribution courses and the National Academy of Design in New York. At the end of his studies, he left for Paris in 1867 , where he studied sculpture at the School of Fine Arts , and studied under Emmanuel Fremier . After 3 years, traveling from Paris to Rome . Here, Saint-Gaudens has been studying ancient art and architecture for 5 years. In Rome, the young sculptor receives his first orders, and here Saint-Godens meets his future wife, an art student, student Augusta Homer.

The sculptor's particular admiration was caused by the reliefs and medals of the times of antiquity and the Renaissance , which influenced both the artistic style of the sculptor himself and the development of American sculpture in the 19th century as a whole. O. Saint-Godens gave his own interpretation of the cultural heritage of antiquity and the Renaissance, creating a kind of synthesis from both cultural traditions.

Glory came to the sculptor after he created the monument to the hero of the American Civil War , Admiral D.G. Farragut . After that, Saint-Gaudens becomes the author of a number of monuments, memorial reliefs and official memorials created by order of the US authorities.

At the suggestion of US President Theodore Roosevelt, O. Saint-Godens in 1904 creates samples for three coins, which were then minted by the US Treasury.

In 1900, Saint-Gaudens was diagnosed with cancer, in 1907, the famous sculptor died.

To aren Lemmy. Augustus Saint-Godens at the Metropolitan Museum // Tretyakov Gallery Magazine, Special Issue 1. AMERICA - RUSSIA: AT THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES, 2011.