International studio (33.1907/1908(1908))

Augustus Saint-Gaudens



GOLD EAGLE AND DOUBLE EAGLE, 1907


BY SAINT-GAUDENS


hood, and the drapery made more simple. Over all
was shed the light of ineffable purity. Nothing of
his so reflects the spirit of the Renaissance or
draws so near its beauties. Simple and severe,
drapery and figure emphasize so as to remove both
from the common light of day and suggest the
heavenly vision. Peace is in every fold and outline.
The medal and coin are fields apart in plastic
art. Modern machinery, which inevitably flattens
and deindividualizes all it touches, has made of
both pretty pictures, pressed on flat gold and silver
dies with the mechanical regularity of a calico
print, as useful, as widely distributed and possessing
precisely the same claim to the admiration of the
artist. Those who have been bred on modern
coins can appreciate nothing else, just as those
bred on the family photograph album apply its
standards to a portrait. Nor can the modern coin,
made by the million, stored by thousands, jealously
guarded from wear and made to be “stacked,” be
safely, wisely or practically modeled on the lines
of the higher tradition of coin and medal.
This tradition Saint-Gaudens sought to follow
in modeling as the last work of his career an eagle
and double eagle. Greek examplars and Italian
medals, beginning with Pisano, have established
a succession from which no man who has studied
them can desire to depart. Nor did Saint-Gaudens.
If one be familiar with Greek coinage, has mastered
its technique and acquired its standards, the two
coins Saint-Gaudens modeled become inevitable.
Our usual coins put an indifferent picture on a
flat disk. The Greek coiner treated the coin as a
whole, filled its space with sense of composition,
was careless of imitation, conventionalized natural
objects and gained “color” by high relief. This
norm Saint-Gaudens followed. The eagle of his
$10 piece is suggested by familiar and beautiful
coins of great vigor and force of Ptolemy Phila-
delphus and Euergetes. The $20 piece has a soaring
eagle of his own model. Both are medals, rather
than coins. •

Both are too high for the
working of modern machin-
ery. Neither appeals to those
schooled to our flat coins. To
those trained by earlier models,
the designs of Saint-Gaudens
are the only ones in our day
above the mere draughtsman’s
level. Little more depressing
has occurred in our day than
the baiting these coins have
had from newspaper and
sciolist. No application of
art to familiar objects is pos-
sible where men are wedded
to their preconceptions and
are ignorant of the succession
of art. These coins had pre-
cisely the reception which a
great portrait would receive in
a land where no man had ever
looked on aught but a village
photograph. T. W.


COIN OF PTOLEMY
EUERGETES


DETAIL, COLUMBIAN
EXPOSITION MEDAL
BY SAINT-GAUDENS

The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, acting in cooperation with Mrs. Saint-
Gaudens, will hold a commemorative exhibition
of the works of the sculptor, to be opened about
March 4. The exhibition will be held in a part of
the large sculpture hall of the Museum. When
originals are not available they will, so far as pos-
sible, be represented by casts or enlarged photo-
graphs. A special committee has been appointed,
of which Daniel C. French is chairman, to include
the following: Ex-officio, J. Pierpont Morgan,
president of the Museum; Robert W. de Forest,
secretary; Sir C. Purdon Clarke, director; Edward
Robinson, assistant director; Henry W. Kent, assist-
ant secretary; Edward D. Adams, Charles F. Mc-
Kim and William Church Osborn, the Museum’s
committee on sculpture; Herbert Adams, Karl
Bitter, and others.

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