The Other Saint-Gaudens
It’s Louis.
After my recent post (click here) about finding John Singer Sargent’s monumental work, “Triumph of Religion” at the Boston Public Library, I received numerous responses. Anne Mapplebeck wrote to let me know about the Dwiggins Marionettes, an historic collection that calls the library home (alas, currently not available for viewing). In addition to those of Sargent, author and art historian Suzanne Hinman referenced other murals at the library by Puvis de Chavanne and Edwin Austin Abbey. She added:
“And then there's Trinity Church just across the street. Although it is credited to H. H. Richardson as one of his great achievements, it was mostly designed, inside and out, by a young Stanford White, then a member of his staff. And the interior painting, designed by John LaFarge--the first large-scale mural project in the U.S.--included Augustus Saint-Gaudens among the artists, who amazingly painted two of the saints!”
But a revelation for me was the discovery of Louis St. Gaudens, brother of the better-known Augustus and a sculptor in his own right. (In time, Louis eliminated the hyphen and the used the abbreviation “St.” in his surname. Gus did neither.) Louis studied art along with Augustus at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, and in 1900 moved to Cornish NH to help his famous brother in creating his sculptures. He purchased a Shaker building in Enfield NH and had it moved and reconstructed into a home in Cornish. Louis is buried at the Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park here in the Upper Valley.
Every time I walk into the Boston Public Library, I feel the magnificence of that staircase; I take yet another photo. A few weeks ago, I sat in one of its cozy window nooks, alternately watching snow cover the library courtyard and taking in details of the staircase’s yellow marble. The lions were always in my line of sight.
Shortly after leaving Boston and returning home, I learned this: In 1894, it was sculptor Louis St. Gaudens who created the lions. I had been gazing at them for almost fifty years, and never knew.
A postscript: Days after writing this post but before its publication, I am again in Boston and have checked into a hotel. On the wall of my room is a framed photo of (can you imagine?) Louis’s lions.
(Photo credits: top, courtesy of Boston Public Library Pictorial Archive. Middle photo by Susan B. Apel)
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Boston Public Library architect Charles McKim, John Singer Sargent, the Saint-Gaudens brothers Augustus and Louis, and Stanford White are all represented in the book The Grandest Madison Square Garden: Art, Scandal & Architecture in Gilded Age New York. It won the 2020 Victorian Society in America award for scholarship and is available at the Enfield and Lebanon libraries. The book’s author, Suzanne Hinman, is an Upper Valley resident who lives in Enfield, New Hampshire.
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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.