Connections: Art, Scandal, and Murder

Actually, mostly art. We visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art recently where we saw August Saint-Gaudens’ wonderful sculpture entitled “Diana.” I am fascinated by sculpture, especially the work of artists from the turn of the century era when our American sculptors were world renowned, men and women like Daniel Chester French (“Seated Lincoln” in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. ), Augustus Saint-Gaudin (Admiral Farragut Memorial), and Anna Hyatt Huntington the great sculptor of animals. This reminded me that several years ago we had visited the home and studio of the sculptor Saint-Gaudens in Cornish, New Hampshire. The place is a National Historic Site and beautiful, set amidst rolling hills near the town of Cornish.

Perhaps Saint-Gauden’s most familiar works are the beautiful US coins he sculpted and medallions he designed at President Theodore Roosevelt’s direction-especially the walking liberty and perched eagle that graced our coinage for generations. He also did the relief sculptures for many commemorative medals, including the one of TR after the president received the Nobel Prize for helping end the Russo-Japanese War.

Saint-Gaudens’ best known works however are monumental, and his most familiar is the Shaw Memorial in Boston, commemorating the service of a Civil War black regiment equipped by well-to-do Boston men. It was commanded by a young, scholarly aristocrat named Robert Gould Shaw. The regiment was involved in a major raid on the Georgia coast, burning the town of Darien. Later the unit distinguished itself in a courageous and near-hopeless attack on Charleston’s confederate defenses. Shaw was martyred in the attack, along with most of the regiment’s soldiers. The much- honored Hollywood film Glory recounts this story.

Our visit to the Philadelphia Museum Art introduced us to one of the great art collection in America housed in what must surely be the most impressive building of its type anywhere. It also offered many surprises, works we did not associate with this particular museum.

One of these we had seen before at the Saint-Gaudens’ home in New Hampshire. It was a statue of one of the beauties of New York in the “Gilded Age, the wife of millionaire Harry K. Thaw. Her identity cannot be said to have been concealed by the wonderful figure sculpted by Saint-Gaudin despite the title he gave it: “Diana.” It was eighteen feet tall and said to be a wonderful likeness of Mrs. Thaw. Often, it is the back story that inspires our interest in a particular work of art.

The gilded copper beauty was to grace the new Madison Square Garden (the second of three such buildings in New York) which was completed in 1890 and demolished in 1926. Both White and Saint-Gaudens felt the statue was too large and cast a smaller version. It is this version that stands in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Smaller versions of the statue were later cast and one, gilded, is in the studio at the Cornish farm of the sculptor.

Whatever Mr. Thaw made of the artistic merits of the statue, its familiar face confirmed his suspicions about the dalliance he suspected between the architect and his wife. Mr. Thaw found this an irritation and an insult surpassing annoyance and shot Sanford White dead. He escaped execution and started a fad by pleading “not guilty by reason of insanity,” the first successful use of this defense apparently, and spent the rest of his life in an hospital for the insane. Believe me, none of this detracts in the slightest from the sculpture itself, or the incredibly beautiful setting in which it is presented by the museum.