Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) was, according to Theodore Roosevelt, “a very great sculptor.” The two men met in 1901 and the new president would later tap Saint-Gaudens to create his 1905 inaugural medal and to redesign the country’s coinage. 

Saint-Gaudens was born in Ireland in March of 1848, the son of Mary (McGuinness) and Bernard Saint-Gaudens. The family emigrated to the United States in August of that same year and settled in New York City. Young Augustus’s first art training came from two cameo cutters. His talent was nurtured at classes at New York’s Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design, and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. After further European study, Saint-Gaudens returned to New York in 1873 where he received his first art commissions. By the time Saint-Gaudens met Theodore Roosevelt, the sculptor had an international reputation based on such works as the statue known as “Grief” in Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Cemetery, the sculpture of Civil War hero Admiral David Farragut in New York, the large bronze relief in Boston of Robert Gould Shaw and the African American soldiers who fought under his command in the Civil War, and “greatest of all,” according to Roosevelt, the standing President Abraham Lincoln figure in Chicago.¹

Roosevelt’s first request of the sculptor was to create the commemorative inaugural medal following the 1904 election victory. It featured a stern profile of Roosevelt’s head, with a similarly severe standing eagle, also in side-view, on the obverse. The president liked the design and was especially fond of how Saint-Gaudens had included a rough translation of “a Square Deal” in Latin (æquum cuique) on the medal.

The president next wanted Saint-Gaudens to redesign America’s coinage, particularly the cent, the ten dollar, and the twenty dollar coins. After securing the approval of Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw, Roosevelt and Saint-Gaudens discussed their ideas over a dinner in 1905. Roosevelt had strong opinions regarding a nation’s coinage. He believed it should be aesthetically pleasing and “worthy” of the nation. Saint-Gaudens’s designs exceeded Roosevelt’s expectations.

The ten dollar gold coin ultimately released in 1907 featured the head of Liberty wearing neither the traditional Phrygian cap representing freedom, nor the laurel wreath from Saint-Gaudens’s original design, but rather a Native American ceremonial headdress which TR suggested because he considered it to be more suitably American. On the back was the side view of a standing eagle closely resembling the eagle from the inaugural medal.² The twenty dollar gold coin displayed a full, standing Liberty striding forward in a blaze of sunlight holding an olive branch and a lit torch. The obverse showed an eagle in flight. Roosevelt considered the coins “more beautiful than any coins since the days of the Greeks, and they achieve their striking beauty because Saint-Gaudens not only possessed a perfect mastery in the physical address of his craft, but also a daring and original imagination.”

Both the president and the sculptor agreed that simplicity lent dignity, and so they chose to leave the phrase “In God We Trust” off of the design. The public and Congress criticized Roosevelt for this omission, and so the phrase was restored to later iterations of the coins. There were also problems with the high-relief design. While it provided greater detail, it was also more difficult to mint, thus most of the coins were issued in a flatter relief.

Saint-Gaudens was in failing health during the entire artistic process. He had been diagnosed with colon cancer and was ultimately unable to complete the design for the one-cent coin, although he had begun it by 1906.³ His artistic genius was widely celebrated before and after his death in August 1907. Theodore Roosevelt gave a laudatory address about Saint-Gaudens at a 1908 retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work held at the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. Throughout his life, Saint-Gaudens received many commissions and his artwork can be readily seen today. He also trained a number of students, including James E. Fraser, creator of the iconic 1913 buffalo nickel. Saint-Gaudens was survived by his wife, painter Augusta (Gussie) Fischer Homer (whom he married in 1877) and their only child, Homer Schiff Saint-Gaudens.

1. All of the Roosevelt quotes come from his 15 December 1908 speech at the Corcoran Gallery’s Saint-Gaudens exhibition.

2. Augustus Saint-Gaudens to Theodore Roosevelt, 11 November 1905, https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.orgo51780

3. Augustus Saint-Gaudens to Theodore Roosevelt, 28 June 1906: https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.orgo53344