Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park

ABOUT

Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park is the former home of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and unofficial center of the Cornish Colony of artists. Visitors to this national park for the arts can experience peaceful historic grounds and rich stories. The park includes the family home (“Aspet”), studio spaces, galleries, and a visitor center. Recastings of four large bronze sculptures by Saint-Gaudens are installed throughout the grounds including the Adams Memorial and Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial. A sculptor-in-residences works in the Ravine Studio as part of the longest running artist residency in the National Park Service. Special programs include contemporary art exhibits, a summer concert series, and Sculptural Visions, the park’s annual fall festival. Blow-Me-Down Farm is home to the preforming arts organization, Opera North, and their seasonal productions. The Saint-Gaudens Memorial serves as an active partner of, and advocate for, the Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park.

SPECIAL RESOURCES

_{Portrait of Augustus Saint-Gaudens by De Witt Clinton Ward, 1905. Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park Archives.}

“As I look out of the window on the hills opposite, I wish I had your power of description, for the whole burst of autumn glory is at its full now, only more beautiful than ever, for some reason or other… It’s perfectly glorious, and the weather is, too.”

— Augustus Saint-Gaudens to Alfred Garnier (1901)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens was an internationally renowned sculptor, teacher, and leader in American art and culture. His works include intimate bas-relief portraits, heroic monuments, and coinage coveted still today. Born in Ireland, the Saint-Gaudens family immigrated to New York City when Augustus was six months old. At age 13, he began apprenticing in the detailed art of cameo cutting and eventually became one of the first Americans to study sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Infused with both realism and idealism, Saint-Gaudens’ public monuments had a dynamic quality not seen before in American sculpture. As the country grappled to define citizenship after the Civil War, this influential sculptor played an outsized role in public understandings of an American identity. Notable works by Augustus Saint-Gaudens include the Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial in Boston, Standing Lincoln in Chicago, and General Sherman Monument in New York City.

Augusta Homer Saint-Gaudens (1848–1926)

Augusta Homer Saint-Gaudens was a self-trained artist born in Roxbury, Massachusetts where her upper-class family retained deep roots. In 1872, she traveled to Rome to complete her education and took private painting lessons. She progressed from an amateur copyist of Old Masters to an assured artist who captured the likenesses of friends and Italian models. Her own artistic aspirations were eventually subsumed by her marriage, motherhood, and supporting her husband’s ambitions as his career in sculpture exploded. When her husband, Augustus, was diagnosed with cancer in 1900, Augusta Saint-Gaudens assumed the role of caregiver. After his death in 1907, her devotion to shaping and preserving his legacy contributed largely to our knowledge of his art today. She eventually conceived the idea of creating a living memorial to him and helped establish the Saint-Gaudens Memorial in 1919. This organization continues to support Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park today.

_{Gilded sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens with reflecting pool. Photograph by Don Freeman, courtesy NPS.}

_{Augusta Homer Saint-Gaudens in the gardens. Photograph courtesy Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park Archive.}

_{Interior of the Little Studio at Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park. Photograph by Don Freeman, courtesy NPS.}

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Augustus and Augusta Saint-Gaudens first came to Cornish, New Hampshire in 1885, renting an old brick home for the summer from his friend and lawyer, Charles C. Beaman. They adapted the house to their needs and converted a hay barn into a sculpture studio. The family grew to love the place and finally purchased it in 1892. They continued to summer in New Hampshire until 1900, after which it became their year-round home. Augustus named the estate Aspet after his father’s birthplace in France. Over the years they transformed the grounds with gardens, hedges, and recreation areas, including a swimming pool, bowling green, and nine-hole golf course.

As his popularity grew and commissions poured in, Saint-Gaudens built a large studio where his assistants worked and the smaller, private Little Studio. His enduring and distinctive public sculptures include the Standing Lincoln in Chicago, Robert Gould Shaw & Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial in Boston, and Adams Memorial in Washington, DC. Later in life he created other masterpieces in miniature including commemorative medals for the Centennial of George Washington’s inauguration in 1889, the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and the Theodore Roosevelt Special Inaugural medal in 1905. At the request of President Roosevelt in 1904, Saint-Gaudens designed three coins for the U.S. Mint including 1907 $20 gold piece, also known as the Double Eagle. He further cemented a national identity through planning positions for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the 1901 McMillan Plan to redesign the National Mall in Washington, DC.

Many other artists followed Saint-Gaudens to Cornish, forming what was known as the Cornish Colony including painters Maxfield Parrish, Thomas Dewing, George de Forest Brush, Lucia Fuller, and Kenyon Cox; dramatist Percy MacKaye; American novelist Winston Churchill; architect Charles Platt; and sculptors Paul Manship, Herbert Adams, Louis St. Gaudens, Annetta St. Gaudens, Elsie Ward Herring, Henry Herring, and Frances Grimes.

Following his death on August 3, 1907, his wife Augusta and their son Homer continued to summer at Aspet. Augusta Saint-Gaudens worked to cement her husband’s legacy to directing remaining assistants to finish incomplete works, selling recastings of his notable sculptures, and organizing exhibitions. In 1919 Augusta and Homer established the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, an organization dedicated to promoting the sculptor’s living legacy. In 1965 the Memorial donated the property to the National Park Service and continues to support programming at the park.

IN COLLABORATION WITH THE NATIONAL TRUST