The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

by David McCullough

  367 “little of the adventurous swing of life”: Saint-Gaudens, ed., Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Vol. I, 244.

  367 “It’s really a business trip”: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her mother, August 2, 1878, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  367 Their route was from Paris: See Saint-Gaudens, ed., Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Vol. I, 248; Wilkinson, Uncommon Clay, 100–101.

  368 “[It]is 275 ft. long”: Baldwin, Stanford White, 79.

  368 “the sound of a Beethoven”: Saint-Gaudens, ed., Reminiscences of Saint-Gaudens, Vol. I, 247.

  368 Stanford White thought the portal: Baldwin, Stanford White, 81.

  368 “We sat on the top row”: Ibid., 82.

  368 “struck an attitude”: Ibid.

  368 To commemorate the fellowship: Baker, Stanny: The Gilded Life of Stanford White, 51.

  369 Gus had “a most successful trip”: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her mother, August 16, 1878, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  369 “He is one of the nicest fellows”: Ibid., no specific date but circa August 1878.

  369 “I hug S[ain]t-Gaudens like a bear”: Baker, Stanny, 53.

  369 She is very kind: Ibid.

  369 One night, with another gregarious American: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her mother, January 31, 1879, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  370 “I have just taken this paper”: Ibid., postscript written by Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

  370 “I am writing in the studio”: Ibid., February 12, 1879.

  370 The model has just come in: Ibid.

  370 “Please don’t say anything”: Ibid.

  370 “Do you want to know”: White, Stanford White: Letters to His Family, 76.

  370 Coffee, eggs, and oatmeal: Ibid.

  371 “I am convinced”: Saint-Gaudens, ed., Reminiscences of Augustus Saint Gaudens, Vol. II, 60.

  371 With her trouble hearing: See letters from Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her mother, May 30, 1879, and January 8, 1870, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  371 “We went to a dancing party”: Ibid., January 13, 1879.

  371 “Every time I go out”: Ibid., March 13, 1879.

  372 Twain would be remembered: Baldwin, Stanford White, 95.

  372 “of making one ‘see things’ ”: Wilkinson, Uncommon Clay, 91.

  372 He, in all simplicity: Ibid.

  373 “I have such respect”: Saint-Gaudens, ed., Reminiscences of Augustus SaintGaudens, Vol. I, 166.

  373 “It was all Mr. White”: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her mother, March 31, 1879, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  373 “You have no idea”: Ibid., April 4, 1879.

  373 His inspiration had been: Gibson, “Augustus Saint-Gaudens and the American Monument,” New Criterion, October 2009, 44.

  373 “Conceive an idea”: Saint-Gaudens, ed., Reminiscences of Augustus SaintGaudens, Vol. II, 19.

  374 “Don’t leave any serious”: Ibid., 30.

  374 “I don’t fully understand”: Ibid., Vol. I, 241.

  375 “all the while trying”: Ibid., 268.

  375 “A poor picture”: Ibid., Vol. II, 79.

  375 “Farragut’s legs seem to be”: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her mother, March 13, 1879, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  375 “He has been very much bothered”: Ibid., March 21, 1879.

  375 “Am sorry to bother you”: Ibid., May 21, 1879.

  375 “He is very much bothered by visitors”: Ibid., May 30, 1879.

  376 “Gus is working”: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her parents, May 8, 1879, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  376 “Augustus … seems to be conquering”: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her mother, May 15, 1879, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  376 “Farragut has two legs”: Ibid., May 30, 1879.

  376 “It is strange how fascinating the life here”: Ibid., June 13, 1879.

  376 She painted a portrait of a friend: Ibid., June 13, 1879, and June 20, 1879.

  376 “[He]feels like a lion”: Ibid., August 14, 1879.

  376 But something had gone wrong: Baker, Stanny, 56.

  376 The nearest thing to an explanation: Genie Emerson to Homer Saint-Gaudens, November 15 (no year), included in the “Drafts to the Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens,” Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  377 In early days: Ibid.

  377 Food was the way White: Ibid.

  377 Genie said, and recalled how: Ibid.

  377 “feeling sorry for things”: Baker, Stanny, 63.

  377 “If ever a man acted”: Ibid.

  378 “If you stick to eight feet”: White, Stanford White: Letters to His Family, 90.

  378 White thought Madison Square Park: Ibid., 101.

  378 “a quiet and distinguished place”: Ibid.

  378 “Go for Madison Square”: Tharp, Saint-Gaudens and the Gilded Era, 136.

  378 “to break away from the regular”: Baker, Stanny, 55.

  378 October 14, 1879: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her mother, October 14, 1879, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  379 “purely mechanical thing”: Ibid., November 21, 1879.

  379 Gus had acquired a flute: Ibid., February 28, 1879, and March 6, 1879.

  379 Rental for both: Ibid., November 21, 1879.

  379 In December came the coldest: Ibid.

  379 The Seine froze over: American Register, December 20, 1879.

  379 Two large coal stoves: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her mother, December 12, 1879, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  379 “Poor Aug is driven”: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her parents, December 12, 1879, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  379 “Louis sleeps there”: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her mother, December 19, 1879, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  379 “All my brain can conceive”: Saint-Gaudens, ed., Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Vol. I, 257–58.

  380 “I haven’t the faintest”: Wilkinson, Uncommon Clay, 102.

  380 “One of Farragut’s legs”: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her mother, January 23, 1880, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  380 “There are nineteen”: Ibid., February 6, 1880.

  381 “I have seen nothing finer”: New York World, February 24, 1880.

  381 Only days later: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her mother, March 10, 1880, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  381 “It was immensely heavy”: Ibid.

  381 “Clear and cloudless”: Ibid.

  381 Aug was “very well”: Ibid.

  381 In April, Gussie discovered: Ibid., May 12, 1880, and June 11, 1880; Wilkinson, Uncommon Clay, 165.

  381 “He felt very much pleased”: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her mother, April 30, 1880, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  381 His entries were awarded: Tharp, Saint-Gaudens and the Gilded Era,142.

  381 “that initiative and boldness”: Wilkinson, Uncommon Clay, 102.

  382 “the incarnation of the sailor”: Gilder, “The Farragut Monument,” Scribner’s, Vol. XXII (June 1881), 166.

  382 The cost was substantial: Augusta Saint-Gaudens to her mother, May 7, 1880, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  382 “You know it is quite an exciting thing”: Ibid., May 12, 1880.

  382 The baby, a boy: Saint-Gaudens, ed., Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Vol. I, 271.

  383 This entire composition: Augustus Saint-Gaudens to Augusta Saint-Gaudens, n.d., but written from New York City, Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  383 “Yesterday I had a good long day’s work”: Ibid.

  383 “They have commenced cutting”: Ibid.

  383 “Did I ever tell you”: Ibid.

  383 How was the “Babby”: Ibid.

  384 a beautiful and remarkable work: New York Times, May 26, 1881.

  384 “The faces are naturally”: Ibid.

  384 The character of the indomitable: New York Evening
Post, undated review in the Saint-Gaudens Papers, Dartmouth College.

  384 “In modeling severe”: Gilder, “The Farragut Monument,” Scribner’s, Vol. XXII (June 1881), 164.

  384 “The sight of such a thing”: Saint-Gaudens, ed., Reminiscences of Augustus SaintGaudens, Vol. I, 265.

  385 “Haven’t I got a right”: Ibid., 263.

  13. Genius in Abundance

  All of Sargent’s masterworks from this period are in collections in the United States: The Portrait of Carolus-Duran is at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute at Williamstown, Massachusetts. His two paintings of evening in the Luxembourg Gardens are at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. El Jaleo is at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston; The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Madame X at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

  The works of Mary Cassatt, too, are to be seen in collections in museums throughout the United States, though her first portrait of her mother, Reading Le Figaro, is in a private collection. Two of sister Lydia, The Cup of Tea and Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly, are at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. One of her finest 1889 mother-and-child paintings, called Mother and Child, is at the Wichita Art Museum in Kansas.

  Americans in Paris, 1860–1900, the illustrated catalogue for a memorable 2006 exhibition with essays by Kathleen Adler, Erica E. Hirshler, and H. Barbara Weinberg, is a superb survey of the works of Cassatt, Sargent, and thirty-five other American artists who studied in Paris. Erica E. Hirshler’s Sargent’s Daughters: The Biography of a Painting is an engaging study of The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit.

  Robert Henri, who was to become a leading American painter of the early twentieth century and one of the most inspiring of all American art teachers, also wrote a delightful book called The Art Spirit, with reflections on his time in Paris and much else.

  PAGE

  387 Paris! We are here!: Robert Henri Diary, September 22, 1888, Archives of American Art.

  387 in 1879: Mathews, Mary Cassatt: A Life, 133–34.

  387 “The Woman Reading … is a miracle”: Ibid., 137.

  388 “There was always a little crowd”: FitzWilliam Sargent to Tom Sargent, August 15, 1879, Archives of American Art.

  388 “No American had ever painted”: Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Vol. I, 44.

  388 May Alcott of Boston: Mathews, Mary Cassatt: A Life, 102–3.

  388 If Mr. John Sargent be excepted: Mathews, Cassatt: A Retrospective, 87.

  389 Most of the summer of 1877: Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Vol. I, xiii.

  390 It was seeing the portrait of Carolus-Duran: Olson, John Singer Sargent, 75.

  390 Sargent’s childhood playmates: Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Vol. I, 75.

  390 “I enjoyed it very much”: Ibid., 76.

  390 “mere dabs and blurs”: Ibid.

  391 “application to art of psychological research”: Charteris, John Sargent, 250.

  391 “In his eyes”: Ibid.

  391 “very poor and bohemian”: Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Vol. I, 57.

  391 He concentrated on each detail: Ibid.

  392 Fanny Watts, the subject of: Ibid., 42.

  392 Later came even more talk: Ibid., 64–65.

  393 “she has wonderful spirits”: Mrs. Robert Simpson Cassatt to Robbie Cassatt, May 21, 1882, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

  394 “Mame’s success is certainly more marked”: Mathews, ed., Cassatt and Her Circle: Selected Letters, 160–61.

  394 “very ill”: Robert Simpson Cassatt to Alexander Cassatt, August 2, 1882, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

  394 “Mary being the worst kind of alarmist”: Ibid.

  394 “Poor dear!”: Mathews, Mary Cassatt: A Life, 162.

  395 “left alone in the world”: Ibid.

  395 “the most striking picture”: Charteris, John Sargent, 57.

  396 Edward Darley Boit: Hirshler, Sargent’s Daughters, 20.

  396 “brilliantly friendly”: Ibid., 21.

  396 The two oldest Boit daughters: Ibid., 4.

  397 “I am persuaded that the individual”: Charteris, John Sargent, 236.

  397 “more felicitous and interesting”: Hirshler, Sargent’s Daughters, 130.

  397 “the complete effect”: Ibid., 96.

  397 “the most talked-about painter in France”: Ratcliff, John Singer Sargent, 67.

  398 “especially attracted by the bizarre”: Charteris, John Sargent, 250–51.

  398 Born in New Orleans: Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Vol. I, 113.

  398 Pierre Gautreau: Ibid.

  399 “thrilled by every movement”: Simmons, From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and Yankee, 127.

  399 “homage to her beauty”: Charteris, John Sargent, 59.

  399 Do you object to people: Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Vol. I, 113.

  399 “still struggling with the unpaintable beauty”: Charteris, John Sargent, 59.

  399 “They have painters who carry off our medals”: Davis, Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X, 94.

  400 “His life is a pleasant life”: FitzWilliam Sargent to Tom Sargent, November 16, 1883, Archives of American Art.

  400 “a horrid state of anxiety”: Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Vol. I, 113.

  401 When, during one sitting: Davis, Strapless, 205.

  401 One day I was dissatisfied with it: Charteris, John Sargent, 60.

  401 When Carolus-Duran came by for a look: Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Vol. I, 113.

  401 “The only Franco-American product of importance”: James, Henry James Letters, Vol. III, ed. Edel, 32.

  401 “half-liked”: Ibid., 43.

  402 Walked up the Champs-Élysées: Charteris, John Sargent, 61.

  403 “I went home with him”: Ibid.

  403 The reviews were essentially of three kinds: Ibid., 63.

  403 a “caricature”: New York Times, May 18, 1884.

  403 “in a person of this type”: Sidlauskas, “Painting Skin,” American Art, Vol. XV, no. 3 (Fall 2001), 20.

  404 Years later, when he sold: Charteris, John Sargent, 65.

  404 Yet hard hit as he was: Ibid., 63.

  404 He left Paris in late May 1884: Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Vol. I, xv.

  404 The first rivet of her skin of copper sheets: Weisberger, Statue of Liberty: The First Hundred Years, 64–65.

  405 The disassembly began in December: Ibid., 74.

  405 The pedestal on which Liberty: Ibid., 82.

  405 It was to stand on the Champ de Mars: Jonnes, Eiffel’s Tower, 22.

  405 “a project,” it was said: Ibid., 23.

  406 In the fall of 1886: Ibid., 23–34.

  407 We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects: Ibid., 26.

  407 “the commercial nation of America”: Ibid., 27.

  408 The chief problem to contend with: Harriss, The Tallest Tower, 62.

  408 “a metal spider web”: Huysmans, “Le Fer,” Certains, 1889, excerpted from L’Art Moderne/Certains, 1975, 346–50. This was included in Cate, The Eiffel Tower: A Tour de Force, 34.

  408 “a work of disconcerting”: Ibid.

  408 “coarseness”: Ibid.

  408 A professor of mathematics predicted: Harriss, The Tallest Tower, 69.

  408 By March 1889: Ibid., 105–6.

  409 “You will remember always”: Ibid., 107.

  409 “We both lost our hearts”: Stevenson, Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed., Mehew, 273.

  409 “the most intense creature”: Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, Vol. I, 179.

  409 “Anybody may have a ‘portrait’ ”: Ibid., 167.

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