Saint-Gaudens, Augustus

(born March 1, 1848, Dublin, Ire.—died Aug. 3, 1907, Cornish, N.H., U.S.) Irish-born U.S. sculptor. Son of an Irish mother and a French father, he was brought to the U.S. in infancy and at 13 was apprenticed to a cameo cutter. He studied sculpture in New York and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1867–70), then settled in New York City in 1872. Between 1880 and 1897 he executed most of the works that earned him his reputation as the foremost American sculptor of the late 19th century. His first important commission was the monument to David Farragut (1878–81) in New York's Madison Square Park. For Boston he produced his great relief monument to Col. Robert G. Shaw and his African American Civil War regiment (1884–97). The memorial to the wife of Henry Adams (1886–91) in Washington, D.C., a mysterious draped figure with a shadowed face, is often considered his greatest work.

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