Taking His Time: Saint-Gaudens and His Masterpiece
Augustus Saint-Gaudens spent about 14 years on the tribute to a Black regiment that fought in the Civil War
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Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907) allowed himself the time needed for his tribute to the Massachusetts 54th Regiment to evolve something meaningful.
The regiment was one of the first to recruit Black men to fight in the Civil War.
In 1863, in a battle for Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina, the regiment suffered a terrible defeat.
Of the about 650 men of the 54th who participated in the battle, more than 270 soldiers were killed, wounded, captured or missing and presumed dead, according to a summary posted by the National Park Service.
Among the dead was the leader of the regiment, Col. Robert Gould Shaw (1837–1863), a white man. The Confederates put Shaw’s body in a common burial pit, intending it as an insult to the leader of the Black regiment, according to the history by the National Parks Service. When the Union gained control of the fort, Shaw’s parents requested that their son’s body not be removed and given an officer’s burial, as they considered it more fitting to remain with his men.
“When the news of the attack reached home, the unit which had been the target of so much attention, publicity, and skepticism finally earned the respect it deserved,” says the Massachusetts Historical Society. “Despite the defeat at Fort Wagner, the recruitment of Black soldiers in the 54th was viewed as a success and opened the way for numerous other Black units in the Union Army for the remainder of the war.”
There was an earlier consideration of a monument to Col. Shaw near the battle site that did not come to fruition. By the early 1880s, though, there was greater interest in Civil War memorials. A committee considered a standard free-standing portrait on horseback of Shaw, an idea his family rejected.
Saint-Gaudens (pronounced Saint Gaw-dens) emerged as the chief candidate to create a memorial for Shaw. Those seeking to honor Shaw were impressed by the statue Saint-Gaudens unveiled in 1881 of Admiral David Farragut (1801–1870), a Union Navy leader during the Civil War.
Saint-Gaudens signed a contract for the Shaw Memorial in 1884, specifying that a modest bronze relief to be completed in two years, according to a history from the National Gallery of Art.
Instead Saint-Gaudens grew increasingly interested in showing Shaw among his men. The project would not be completed until 1897.
The expanded scope of the work involved far more study and planning than the original project, as the sculptor recalled in “The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens,” a 1913 book produced with the assistance of his son, Homer Saint-Gaudens.
There’s a quote taken from this book that’s often used to describe the years Saint-Gaudens spent on this project:
“My own delay I excuse on the ground that a sculptor’s work endures for so long that it is next to a crime for him to neglect to do everything that lies in his power to execute a result that will not be a disgrace.
There is something extraordinarily irritating, when it is not ludicrous, in a bad statue. It is plastered up before the world to stick and stick for centuries, while man and nations pass away. A poor picture goes into the
garret, books are forgotten, but the bronze remains, to amuse or shame the populace and perpetuate one of our various idiocies.”
The source of the quote is not usually cited, so I had to track it down. In skimming the book, I found the section where Saint-Gaudens describes the men he used as models for the soldiers. He sought to honor the soldiers. But the language he used about the models reads today as quite offensive, although the sculptor probably did not intend to be.
Labor of love
There is a life lesson in the approach Saint-Gaudens took in this project of the memorial of the 54th regiment. He stuck with his vision and found a way to make it into reality.
“Hence the monument, developing in this way infinitely beyond what could be paid for, became a labor of love, and lessened my hesitation in setting it aside at times to make way for more lucrative commissions, commissions that would reimburse me for the pleasure and time I was devoting to this,” Saint-Gaudens wrote.
“There had been much good-natured abuse of me for the time expended on the bas-relief,” Saint-Gaudens also recalled in the book.
“But it was impossible to carry out my idea otherwise, in a great degree because of the absence of sufficient remuneration.”
“This I mention without the slightest trace of regret or reproach, as the sum I consented to execute the monument for was ample to provide an adequate and dignified work. It was the extraordinary opportunity, the
interest of the task, and my enthusiasm, that led to a development far beyond what was expected of me. And I held it a great joy to be able to carry out my idea as I wished.”
