Abraham Lincoln: The Man (Standing Lincoln) : A Bronze Statuette by Augustus Saint-Gaudens
2013; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 48; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/675325
ISSN2169-3072
Autores Tópico(s)American Environmental and Regional History
ResumoPrevious articleNext article FreeAbraham Lincoln: The Man (Standing Lincoln): A Bronze Statuette by Augustus Saint-GaudensThayer TollesThayer TollesMarica F. Vilcek Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, The Metropolitan Museum of Art with technical notes by Linda Borsch, Conservator, The Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation, and Federico Carò, Associate Research Scientist, Department of Scientific Research, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreIn January 2012, just days before the opening of the New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts, the Metropolitan acquired a bronze statuette of transformative impact to the present installation and to its historic American sculpture collection. This particular cast of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s Abraham Lincoln: The Man, more familiarly known as Standing Lincoln (Figures 1, 2), surfaced after decades of private ownership, unknown to scholars and unrecorded in the catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work.1 Art historical and technical research conducted during the acquisition process yielded one affirmation of its significance after another: the first cast (1911) in an edition of some seventeen located bronzes, the sculpture bears a distinguished provenance and installation history and offers important insight into foundry practices of the day. That it should join the Metropolitan’s collection is fitting, for the Museum has a long history of association with Saint-Gaudens, even having served as the opening venue for his memorial exhibition in 1908, an installation of 154 works held in the Hall of Sculpture (now the Great Hall).2 The acquisition of Standing Lincoln has redressed the one significant lacuna in the Metropolitan’s broad holdings of the artist’s work, which number forty-five but until now lacked a reduction based on the public monument that affirmed his career as a sculptor of national, and later international, repute.1. Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, 1848–1907). Abraham Lincoln: The Man (Standing Lincoln), 1884–87; reduced 1910 (this cast, 1911). Bronze, 40½ × 16½ × 30¼ in. (102.9 × 41.9 × 76.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Tyson Family Gift, in memory of Edouard and Ellen Muller; The Beatrice G. Warren and Leila W. Redstone, and Maria DeWitt Jesup Funds; Dorothy and Imre Cholnoky, David Schwartz Foundation Inc., Joanne and Warren Josephy, Annette de la Renta, Thomas H. and Diane DeMell Jacobsen Ph.D. Foundation, and Felicia Fund Inc. Gifts, 2012 (2012.14a, b). Photograph: Bruce J. Schwarz, The Photograph Studio, MMA2. Abraham Lincoln: The Man (Standing Lincoln), side view. Photograph: Bruce J. Schwarz, The Photograph Studio, MMAThe arc of Saint-Gaudens’s career may be correlated precisely with the demand for civic sculptures commemorating Civil War heroes in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Apprenticed as a cameo cutter between 1861 and 1867 in New York, Saint-Gaudens also attended night classes in drawing at the Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. He moved to Paris in 1867, and in March 1868 matriculated at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he studied in the atelier of François Jouffroy. The rigorous academic training he received in Paris, and his exposure to classical and Renaissance sculpture during his subsequent sojourns in Rome in 1870–75, formed the basis of his signature style, one in which the naturalistic treatment of a fuid, textured surface was paramount and the architectural setting was fundamental to a monument’s narrative and pedagogical imperatives. These hallmarks distinguish the Civil War–related commissions for which he is celebrated, notably the Farragut Monument (1877–80, Madison Square Park, New York); the Shaw Memorial (1884–97, Boston Common); and the Sherman Monument (1892–1903, Grand Army Plaza, Manhattan, New York).The first of these monuments, celebrating Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, was unveiled in 1881, earning Saint-Gaudens the praise of New York’s cultural elite, who parlayed their connections with the leading journals and newspapers of the day to promote the sculptor as a harbinger of a new school of American-based artists working in a sophisticated, French-inspired style. This deliberately orchestrated publicity machine of the early 1880s brought Saint-Gaudens increasing national notice and soon expanded his circle of patrons beyond Boston and New York. In 1883 the Chicago Lincoln Memorial Fund unofficially granted Saint-Gaudens the commission for Standing Lincoln. (The final contract is dated November 11, 1884.) This larger-than-lifesize monument (Figure 3), which spawned the posthumous reductions beginning with the Metropolitan’s in 1911, was funded by the estate of lumber magnate Eli Bates. The $40,000 commission (equivalent to about $1 million in today’s purchasing power) called not only for a statue of Lincoln for Lincoln Park but also for the Eli Bates Fountain, Storks at Play, which Saint-Gaudens modeled in 1886–87 in collaboration with his gifted studio assistant Frederick William MacMonnies. The bronze ensemble of three herons and three putti holding fish is installed in a circular stone basin, also within the park.3. Augustus Saint-Gaudens; architectural setting designed by Stanford White. Abraham Lincoln: The Man (Standing Lincoln), Lincoln Park, Chicago, 1884–87. Bronze. Photograph: James Peterson. Courtesy of Chicago Park DistrictSaint-Gaudens’s portrait style melded accurate likeness with projection of character, the result of research, observation, and instinct. The sculptor particularly relied on these varied approaches for the Lincoln commission, the honor of modeling a portrait of the martyred president having inspired him to added seriousness of purpose. Saint-Gaudens’s vision of Lincoln was in large part informed by his own youthful recollections. In February 1861 he had seen the president-elect in New York during a procession down Fifth Avenue to the Astor House, and he remembered him as “a tall and very dark man, seemingly entirely out of proportion in his height with the carriage in which he was driven, bowing to the crowds on each side.”3 Four years later, in April 1865, Saint-Gaudens paid his respects to the assassinated president at City Hall. He recalled, “After joining the interminable line that formed somewhere down Chatham Street and led up by the bier at the head of the staircase, I saw Lincoln lying in state . . . and I went back to the end of the line to look at him again. This completed my vision of the big man, though the funeral, which I viewed from the roof of the old Wallack’s Theater on Broome Street, deepened the profound solemnity of my impression.”4This “profound solemnity” was later reinforced as Saint-Gaudens, on the recommendation of his close friend and critical advocate Richard Watson Gilder, poet and editor of the Century Magazine, studied Lincoln’s speeches and writings in preparation for the commission. Excerpts from the Cooper Union speech (February 27, 1860) and second inaugural address (March 4, 1865) were carved into the accompanying sixty-foot-long exedra, while bronze cannonballs flanking the steps have extracts from the Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863) and a letter written to Horace Greeley (August 22, 1862), editor of the New-York Daily Tribune. These elements, along with the granite pedestal, were designed in collaboration with the architect Stanford White, who regularly worked in creative partnership with Saint-Gaudens on the planning of settings for his monuments.5In 1885, during his first summer in Cornish, New Hampshire, Saint-Gaudens began concentrated work on Standing Lincoln. To entice him to visit what would become his longtime summer retreat, the sculptor had been promised “plenty of Lincoln-shaped men up there.”6 With a lean, six-foot-four farmer named Langdon Morse serving as his model, Saint-Gaudens created a number of small clay sketches (since destroyed; see Figure 4) in which he arrived at the figure’s standing pose. (He also considered, then abandoned, a seated one.) 7 To ensure an accurate physical likeness, Saint-Gaudens no doubt consulted photographs, presumably including those taken by the Mathew Brady gallery, whose Washington, D.C., studio Lincoln visited several times during the Civil War. In his articulation of Lincoln’s tall, gangly figure Saint-Gaudens might have found particularly useful a full-length photograph taken by Anthony Berger at Brady’s gallery on February 9, 1864. Another photograph, taken by Brady on January 8, 1864, in which Lincoln poses with his left hand behind his back (Figure 5), may have inspired Saint-Gaudens’s adaptation of that gesture.84. Clay sketches for Abraham Lincoln: The Man (Standing Lincoln), 1885, destroyed. In Saint-Gaudens 1913, vol. 2, p. [27]5. Mathew B. Brady (American, 1823?–1896). Abraham Lincoln, January 8, 1864. Photograph: National Archives, Washington, D.C. (111-B-3656)Saint-Gaudens also relied on a life mask of Lincoln’s face and casts of his right and left hands taken by the Chicago sculptor Leonard Wells Volk in the spring of 1860 (Figures 6, 7). Volk took the mold of his face in April and those of his hands on May 20, two days after Lincoln received the Republication Party’s nomination for president. Volk was the first artist to model Lincoln’s portrait and to produce life molds, and as a result, made his name and subsequent living from the steady output of variant portrait busts. (The Metropolitan has a posthumous example of about 1914.)9 Fortuitously, Volk’s son, the painter Douglas Volk, brought the original plaster casts to the attention of Saint-Gaudens, who in 1886, along with Richard Watson Gilder and collectors Thomas B. Clarke and Erwin Davis, purchased them for $1,500 to be placed in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (They are now in the National Museum of American History.) To finance the donation, the men organized a subscription whereby funders would receive sets in either bronze or plaster, depending on the amount contributed ($85 or $50, respectively). Saint-Gaudens oversaw the casting in 1886 and added dedicatory inscriptions to the back of the mask and to the wrists. He then individualized the casts by insetting the subscriber’s name within the inscription on the mask. (The Metropolitan’s bronze mask and right hand were originally owned by Gilder.) For his monumental figure Saint-Gaudens adopted from the mask the high forehead, large ears, deep-set eyes, and facial structure, to which he added the familiar tousled hair, bushy eyebrows, and trimmed beard.6. Leonard Wells Volk (American, 1828–1895). Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln, 1860 (this cast, 1886). Bronze, L. 8 in. (20.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Jonathan L. Cohen and Allison B. Morrow Gift and Friends of the American Wing Fund 2007 (2007.185.2). Photograph: Bruce J. Schwarz, The Photograph Studio, MMA7. Leonard Wells Volk. Right Hand of Abraham Lincoln, 1860 (this cast, 1886). Bronze, L. 6¼ in. (15.9 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Jonathan L. Cohen and Allison B. Morrow Gift and Friends of the American Wing Fund, 2007 (2007.185.1). Photograph: Bruce J. Schwarz, The Photograph Studio, MMAThe final conception for the statue, one maintained in the reductions, was innovative: Lincoln stands motionless in front of a ceremonial Chair of State. Saint-Gaudens presented Lincoln not as a man in action, but as a man in an intensely private, introspective moment, preparing to lift his head to address his audience. Lincoln’s left hand grasps the lapel of his frock coat, while his right is positioned behind his back, loosely clenched in a fist. Saint-Gaudens added subtle naturalistic touches that activate the surface of an essentially static monument, from the undulating folds of fabric on Lincoln’s vest to the projection of his left foot off the edge of the base into the viewer’s space. His head is slightly bowed, his expression pensive (Figure 8). One contemporary noted that Lincoln’s “face was not exactly that of Narcissus” and that, nonetheless, and despite Lincoln’s lanky ungainliness, Saint-Gaudens had successfully solved “the problem of being very real and yet indicating grandeur of character.”10 In other words, he had presented Lincoln as an individual and a hero, both homely and majestic, as a thinker, an orator, a leader, and a defender of liberty.8. Abraham Lincoln: The Man (Standing Lincoln), detail of head and upper torso. Photograph: Bruce J. Schwarz, The Photograph Studio, MMAThe Chair of State was deliberately oversized to emphasize both the power of the presidential office and the gravity of the political moment, serving a symbolic rather than practical function. Rendered as a classical klismos, it was derived compositionally from the Throne of the Priest (ca. 330 B.C.) in the Theater of Dionysos in Athens. Saint-Gaudens wrote in his Reminiscences of being “absorbed before the cast of a Greek seat in the theater at Athens,” which he saw in the Museum of Fine Arts (Figure 9) during a trip to Boston relating to the Shaw Memorial.11 In particular, Saint-Gaudens looked to the form of the throne’s legs as well as to the low-relief decoration. Lincoln’s chair features a crest rail (Figure 10) on which a low-relief American eagle is posed frontally with wings outspread and accompanied by the motto “E PLVRIBVS VNVM” (out of many, one), the device of eagle and motto adapted from the Great Seal of the United States. With the chair, Saint-Gaudens introduced a symbolism both national and timeless that would have been readily legible to viewers of the day. As a journalist described it shortly before the sculpture was cast by the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company in the summer of 1887, “the feet are lion claws, to denote authority and strength; the sides of the seats are Roman fasces, to indicate the Executive. . . . There are oak leaves for power, and palm leaves for martyrdom, while the arches between the legs have ornaments of pine cones, suggestive of the North.”129. Installation view of plaster cast of Throne of the Priest (ca. 330 B.C.) from the Theater of Dionysos, Athens, in the Classical Galleries, Museum of Fine Arts, Copley Square, Boston. The cast is to the left of the doorway. Photograph: © 2013 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston10. Abraham Lincoln: The Man (Standing Lincoln), detail of chair crest rail. Photograph: Bruce J. Schwarz, The Photograph Studio, MMAThe Standing Lincoln monument was dedicated before ten thousand people on October 22, 1887, with Abraham Lincoln’s fourteen-year-old grandson and namesake unveiling the flag-draped sculpture. The outpouring of critical accolades immediately positioned it as a landmark sculpture: “the first statue of Lincoln that has yet been made” and “the finest product of American sculpture yet achieved” were frequent refrains in contemporary newspapers and journals.13 American sculptors immediately looked to Saint-Gaudens’s likeness for creative and narrative guidance, not only in its realism, but also in the way Lincoln is represented symbolically as defender and preserver of the Union. Among those influenced by it was longtime Metropolitan trustee Daniel Chester French, for both his reflective standing bronze in Lincoln, Nebraska (1909–12), and his massive seated figure (1911–22) for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., which became the most iconic of all sculptural depictions of Lincoln.14Beginning in the 1890s, as Saint-Gaudens worked principally on the Shaw and Sherman monuments, riding the coattails of his success with Farragut and Lincoln, he began casting so-called commercial bronzes. These small casts were produced in unlimited editions for a mass market and were sold principally through galleries in New York and Boston or occasionally purchased directly from the artist. Saint-Gaudens’s principal objective was to generate steady income between the infrequent payments for his commissioned monuments, which often took him many years to complete. By the late 1890s, first in New York and after 1897 in Paris, he had reduced and cast four models that would remain the nexus of his small-bronze business both before and after his death: Diana, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Puritan, and Amor Caritas.15 After 1900, when Saint-Gaudens returned to the United States from his stay in France, his wife, Augusta, in consultation with the sculptor and his studio assistants, increasingly managed the production and marketing of his commercial bronzes. Her meticulous record-keeping allows for an accurate reconstruction of patterns of pricing and sales and the selection of foundries, as well as the gradual introduction of additional models to the repertoire.After Saint-Gaudens’s death in 1907, following a hiatus during which she managed the consolidation and dispersal of works for the five-venue memorial exhibition (1908–10), Augusta Saint-Gaudens turned her attention to casting small bronzes from the sculptor’s oeuvre with a renewed dedication both practical (to provide income) and idealistic (to ensure her husband’s public artistic legacy). Under the terms of Saint-Gaudens’s will she was authorized to cast posthumously any works that he had copyrighted, a practice known as estate casting, where in the best possible scenario bronzes are cast from original plasters at the deceased sculptor’s preferred foundries, even by his favorite artisans. By the early 1920s, when Augusta Saint-Gaudens ceased casting, she had expanded the inventory of small bronzes to twenty-five, scrupulously controlling their quality and shrewdly placing them in museums and libraries, in addition to managing private sales for domestic display.As correspondence attests, Saint-Gaudens was amenable to a reduction to a smaller scale of the monumental Standing Lincoln during his lifetime. In 1902 he was asked by Charles McKim of McKim, Mead & White to authorize a marble replica at the same scale as Jean-Antoine Houdon’s full-length George Washington (1792; Capitol Building, Richmond, Virginia) for the White House. The firm, which was overseeing renovations to the White House, planned to place marble replicas of both sculptures in the entrance hall. They were to be produced by the New York–based Piccirilli Brothers, esteemed carvers for many leading American sculptors.16 However, the project was never carried out. Several months before Saint-Gaudens’s death, during a discussion of copyright issues with their attorney Charles O. Brewster, Augusta Saint-Gaudens inquired about the possibility of producing a statuette. Brewster responded: “As to the reduction of the standing Lincoln, I suppose that there would be no objection to your making such copies. I assume that this statue was never copyrighted.”17 Shortly thereafter, in reply to a separate request by Saint-Gaudens to produce a full-size replica, the Commissioners of Lincoln Park provided a definitive answer: “By a unanimous vote, [they] resolved to never permit any replicas to be made of the statue of Lincoln. This . . . would not preclude the making of plaster casts for museums, following the custom in regard to great works of art every where.”18Indeed, during preparations for the memorial exhibition at the Metropolitan, Augusta Saint-Gaudens received approval from the Lincoln Park commissioners to cast two full-size plasters from a mold taken off the original bronze. One was intended for the traveling exhibition (Figure 11), while the other remained in the New York studio of plaster caster John Herman Walthausen, who had traveled to Chicago to produce the mold. Later Augusta Saint-Gaudens appealed through Robert Todd Lincoln, the president’s son, for permission to produce reductions after the full-size bronze, and in August 1908 the park commissioners gave their consent “to aid the widow.”1911. “Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens,” Hall of Sculpture, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, view looking south, 1908In spring 1910, shortly after the close of the memorial exhibition at its final venue, the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, Augusta Saint-Gaudens assigned Gaëtan Ardisson, the sculptor’s longtime trusted mold maker and technician, the task of reducing Standing Lincoln from its original 11½ feet in height to a size she later described to the Metropolitan’s director Edward Robinson as “3 ft. 5 in.” including the plinth (the Metropolitan’s cast measures 40½ inches).20 Her precise records, maintained in her account book, provide an unusually complete glimpse into the production process. She first purchased the full-size plaster that remained in Walthausen’s New York studio and had it transported to Cornish, New Hampshire, where assistants continued to bring monumental commissions to completion and to assist in the production of models for the commercial bronzes.21 Records of payments to Ardisson reveal that he began the work in September 1910 and continued through April 1911, expending a total of 1,424 hours—testament to the laborious process of sculpture making.22 The task was completed using a mechanical reducing machine, a tool in widespread use since its development in France in the 1830s. Augusta Saint-Gaudens expressed her pleasure at the result to Edward Robinson, writing him in May 1911 to inform him of the opportunity to purchase a bronze cast: “This reduction seems to us unusually successful.”23Unlike Saint-Gaudens, who cast with many different foundries, Augusta Saint-Gaudens worked consistently with just two: Tiffany Studios in New York and Gorham Manufacturing Company in Providence, Rhode Island. Focusing on Tiffany and Gorham was shrewd, for the foundries channeled bronzes into their respective New York showrooms and even sent bronzes to each other for inventory. Tiffany offered to make casts of Standing Lincoln for $240 apiece, as opposed to Gorham’s estimate of $380 (or $700 for two), and following her husband’s practice she almost always selected the lowest bid.24 Although the Metropolitan’s statuette does not have a foundry mark, the first cast was made at Tiffany Studios in 1911, and as is detailed below, the provenance of the Museum’s cast definitively identifies it as that example. As her account book attests, on December 19 Augusta Saint-Gaudens paid Tiffany $240 for the reduction as well as $12 for “putting on inscription”—possibly a reference to their working “AVGVSTVS SAINT-GAVDENS•SCVLPTOR• M•D•C•C•C•LXXXVII” into the surface of the wax model.25 Her foundry selection was all the more logical inasmuch as Charles and Ernest Aubry, two of Saint-Gaudens’s preferred founders, were then employed by Tiffany Studios.26Two other casts were retailed in 1912. Gorham’s showroom sold the second cast (now at the Yale University Art Gallery) to George Armour, and Boston’s Doll & Richards gallery sold the third (now at the Harvard Art Museums) to Grenville W. Winthrop. Each was priced at $1,500.27 Like the Metropolitan’s bronze, neither bears a foundry mark, so it is impossible to determine where Armour’s was produced, though it was likely at Tiffany Studios, even though sold through Gorham.28 Winthrop’s cast is documented as having been cast at Tiffany Studios and approved by Louis Comfort Tiffany and the sculptor James Earle Fraser, a former Saint-Gaudens studio assistant and frequent adviser to Augusta Saint-Gaudens on artistic matters.29During the early years of her casting Standing Lincoln reductions, Augusta Saint-Gaudens twice offered the Metropolitan an opportunity to purchase one. She regularly corresponded with Director Edward Robinson and sculptor Daniel Chester French, chair of the trustees’ committee on sculpture, often drawing their attention to works available for purchase. In one letter she informed Robinson about the availability of a large version of the rejected reverse for the World’s Columbian Exposition commemorative presentation medal (1892–94), as well as the Lincoln statuette and a heroic-size bust derived from the Standing Lincoln monument (1910; Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire). After seeing a copy of the letter, French responded to Robinson: “In view of past experiences I suppose it is not within the range of possibility that Mrs. Saint-Gaudens expected to present these bronzes [the Lincoln statuette and bust] to the Museum! If this were the case, our course would be clear. As it is, I suppose you wish me to take the matter under consideration and advise you later as to my views on the subject. I should very much like to have both of these bronzes, but it is probable that we should have to pay a pretty large sum for them, but this thought gives me pause.”30 French was alluding to Augusta Saint-Gaudens’s difficult temperament, which he had encountered both as de facto curator of the Saint-Gaudens memorial exhibition at the Metropolitan and during Museum negotiations for the purchase of four bronzes through the auspices of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial Committee.31 Thus French did not recommend that the Metropolitan pursue the Standing Lincoln acquisition either at that time or in 1914, when Augusta Saint-Gaudens again offered the opportunity to purchase a cast along with the Victory statuette excerpted from the Sherman Monument.32 (The Museum ultimately purchased the Victory from her in 1917.)By at least 1914 Tiffany was using a more durable bronze master model (from which molds were made to produce additional bronze statuettes) rather than plaster ones (which deteriorated and had to be replaced after several molds were cast). Augusta Saint-Gaudens’s willingness to invest in a bronze pattern for Standing Lincoln is an indication of her confidence that a sizable number of reductions would be required in the future.33 The statuette, priced throughout the 1910s at $1,500 (then the top of the market for an American bronze statuette), earned her a handsome income as she steadily sold casts. Augusta Saint-Gaudens’s account book records three additional casts in 1914–15: income in 1914 for one sold by Gorham and outlay to Tiffany Studios in 1915 for two casts, one to be sold through Gorham in New York, the other through Doll & Richards in Boston.34By 1917 Tiffany Studios’ casting charge had risen to $450, as against Gorham’s $420. Because Tiffany & Co.’s showroom planned to charge a 30 percent commission on casts sold (rather than the previous 20 percent), Augusta Saint-Gaudens moved the production of Standing Lincoln casts (and several other models) to the Gorham foundry in Providence. Casts produced by Gorham in 1917 and later are readily identifiable, as they include the foundry-generated serial mark QAWM.35 All casts, whether produced by Tiffany or by Gorham, exhibit a remarkable similarity in construction and surface appearance, evidence not only of their having been produced from a single bronze pattern but also of Augusta Saint-Gaudens’s discerning commitment to quality control. In 1921 she received a bid of $650 from Roman Bronze Works for casting Standing Lincoln, but there is no evidence that the firm produced any replicas.36 Casting of the Lincoln statuettes ceased in the early 1920s, as did production of other authorized posthumous models. By that time several were in public institutions; one was acquired by the public library (now Jackson District Library) in Jackson, Michigan, in 1915, and in 1920 the Newark Museum received one as the gift of Franklin Murphy Jr. Augusta Saint-Gaudens also reserved one cast for the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, which she founded in 1919 to maintain the Cornish home and studios, as well as the collections. Today it is maintained by the National Park Service as the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site.The Metropolitan’s Standing Lincoln is distinguished not only as the first cast in the edition, but also by the nature of its early provenance. Augusta Saint-Gaudens arranged to have the new sculpture shipped to the Smithsonian’s National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., presumably so as to give it maximum exposure.37 She also lent the National Gallery the heroic-size bronze bust of Lincoln excerpted from the Chicago monument (the one she had previously offered to the Metropolitan). Her choice of Washington was logical, not only for historical associations, but also because she and her husband had been frequent visitors there in the years before the sculptor’s death. In 1901 he had been named to the Senate Park Commission, known as the McMillan Commission, formed to clarify planning on and around the National Mall, and in 1905 he had been selected by President Theodore Roosevelt to redesign the nation’s ten- and twenty-dollar gold coins and the one-cent piece. Furthermore, the memorial exhibition had traveled from the Metropolitan directly to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in December 1908. Augusta Saint-Gaudens asked its organizer, Glenn Brown, secretary of the American Institute of Architects, to appeal to the National Gallery’s curator William Holmes for acceptance of the loans.The bronze cast was shipped to Washington directly from the Tiffany Studios foundry in December 1911. At the museum it was assigned an accession number, recorded on the rear edge of the plinth in red paint—a valuable clue to the early provenance of the piece.38 In May 1912 Augusta Saint-Gaudens sold the statuette, though still on loan, to Clara Stone Hay (1849–1914) for $1,000.39 At that same time she copyrighted the sculpture and obtained permission from Clara Hay to have the inscription “COPYRIGHT 1912 BY A. H. SAINT-GAUDENS” cold-worked into the rear edge of the plinth.40That Augusta Saint-Gaudens should have suggested to Clara Hay that she purchase the first example of the Standing Lincoln statuette is unsurprising. She wa
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