Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was an American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts generation who embodied the ideals of the American Renaissance.
Raised in New York City, he traveled to Europe for further training and artistic study. After he returned to New York, he achieved major critical success for his monuments commemorating heroes of the American Civil War, many of which still stand.
Saint-Gaudens created works such as the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on Boston Common and grand equestrian monuments to Civil War generals: General John Logan Memorial in Chicago's Grant Park and William Tecumseh Sherman at the corner of New York's Central Park. Saint-Gaudens also created Classical works such as the Diana.
He also used his design skills in numismatics. Most notably, he designed the $20 Saint Gaudens Double Eagle gold piece for the US Mint, considered one of the most beautiful American coins ever issued, as well as the $10 Indian Head gold eagle; both of these were minted from 1907 until 1933.
In his later years he founded the Cornish Colony, an artistic colony that included notable painters, sculptors, writers, and architects. His brother Louis Saint-Gaudens, with whom he occasionally collaborated, was also a well-known sculptor. Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin, Ireland to an Irish mother and French father, Bernard Paul Ernest Saint-Gaudens, a shoemaker by trade from a small village in the Fr