rt of America may
prove to be the art of the future.

VII

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS[C]

[C] Address delivered before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on
February 22, 1908. Now revised and enlarged.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin, Ireland, on the first day of
March, 1848, but was brought to America at the age of six months. His
childhood and youth were passed in the city of New York, as was a great
part of his working life; and though his origin was foreign, lifelong
associations had stamped him indelibly an American. The greater part of
his work was done in America; almost all of it was done for America; and
I do not think it is fancy that sees in his art the expression of a
distinctively American spirit. Yet from his mixed French and Irish
blood he may well have derived that mingling of the Latin sense of form
with a Celtic depth of sentiment which was so markedly characteristic of
his genius.

His father, Bernard Paul Ernest Saint-Gaudens, was a shoemaker from the
little town of Aspet in Haute-Garonne, only a few miles from the town of
Saint-Gaudens, from which the family must have drawn its origin and its
name. His mother was Mary McGuinness, a native of Dublin. Augustus
Saint-Gaudens was one of several children born to this couple and not
the only artist among them, for his younger brother Louis also attained
some reputation as a sculptor, though his entire lack of ambition
prevented his achieving all that was expected of him by those who knew
his delicate talent. The boy Augustus attended the public schools of New
York and received there all the formal education he ever had; but at
thirteen it was necessary for him to face the problem of earning his
living. His artistic proclivities were probably already well marked, and
to give them some scope, while assuring him a regular trade at which
money could be earned, he was apprenticed in the good old way to a cameo
cutter named Louis Avet, said to be the first man to cut stone cameos in
the United States. Thus it came about that the greatest of American
sculptors had much such a practical apprenticeship as a Florentine of
the fifteenth century might have had. He himself always spoke of it as
"one of the most fortunate things that ever happened to him" and
attributed much of his success to the habit of faithful labor acquired
at this time. Probably, also, the habit of thinking in terms of relief,
fostered by years of work at this anci