BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Gallery of Art -- West Wing -- Exhibit: Shaw Memorial

DC -- Natl Gallery of Art -- West Wing -- Exhibit: Shaw Memorial:

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[1] NGASHW_081103_002.JPG	[2] NGASHW_081103_007.JPG	[3] NGASHW_081103_011.JPG
[4] NGASHW_081103_018.JPG	[5] NGASHW_081103_025.JPG	[6] NGASHW_081103_030.JPG
[7] NGASHW_081103_040.JPG	[8] NGASHW_081103_044.JPG	[9] NGASHW_081103_052.JPG
[10] NGASHW_081103_065.JPG	[11] NGASHW_081103_076.JPG	[12] NGASHW_081103_081.JPG
[13] NGASHW_081103_085.JPG	[14] NGASHW_081103_090.JPG	[15] NGASHW_081103_098.JPG
[16] NGASHW_081103_103.JPG	[17] NGASHW_081115_14.JPG	[18] NGASHW_081115_16.JPG
[19] NGASHW_081115_28.JPG	[20] NGASHW_081115_35.JPG	[21] NGASHW_081115_45.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. NGASHW_081103_002.JPG: Pictures of Saint-Gaudens' Shaw Memorial, whose gallery had been closed for several years for some reason.
2. NGASHW_081103_044.JPG: Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Regiment: Commissioned from the celebrated American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in the early 1880s and dedicated as a monument in 1897, the Shaw Memorial has been acclaimed as the greatest American sculpture of the nineteenth century. The memorial commemorates the valor of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the men of the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Regiment, the first Civil War unit of African Americans enlisted in the North. The Shaw Memorial Project is made possible by the generous support of The Circle of the National Gallery of Art Additional support is provided by Shell Oil Company Foundation. The Assault on Fort Wagner, 18 July 1863: The Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Volunteer Infantry was raised shortly after Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863. Recruits, mostly free men, came from many states, encouraged by African American leaders such as the great orator Frederick Douglass, whose own sons joined the Fifty-fourth. The unit was led by twenty-five-year-old Robert Gould Shaw, the Harvard-educated son of dedicated white abolitionists. As an officer in the Second Massachusetts Infantry, Shaw had already experienced combat and been twice wounded. The Fifty-fourth Regiment had its first test of battle on 16 July 1863, at James Island, South Carolina, and two days later led the assault upon Fort Wagner, which stood on Morris Island guarding access to the port of Charleston. Although Union artillery had bombarded the fortress all day long, the Confederates were virtually unharmed, and they mowed down the advancing Union forces. Shaw led the charge and was one of the first to die, killed by a bullet as he approached the top of the parapet. Of the approximately six hundred men of the Fifty-fourth who participated, nearly three hundred were captured, declared missing, or died from wounds they received that day. Their steadfastness and bravery in the face of slaughterous fire were widely reported, providing a rallying point for African Americans who had longed for the chance to fight for Emancipation. By the end of the war, African Americans constituted ten percent of the Union forces, contributing crucial manpower to the final victory of the North. Creating the Memorial: Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin in 1848 and raised in New York, where he apprenticed as a cameo cutter at the age of thirteen. After a period of study in Paris in the 1860s, he began his career in Rome with several commissions for sculpted portraits. In post-Civil War America, Saint-Gaudens found a great demand for public sculpture to honor the nation's war dead. The Shaw Memorial, first intended as a traditional equestrian monument to one heroic figure, evolved into a more original and challenging project as the artist added a narrative relief to commemorate the troops as well as their leader. Although the artist's contract called for the work to be completed in two years, Saint-Gaudens took more than a decade to finish it. Even before the bronze Shaw Memorial was unveiled on Boston Common in May 1897, Saint-Gaudens was refining its design in a plaster version. When this cast was exhibited in Paris in 1898, it showed slight changes from the original conception, and further changes when it was shown there again in 1900. In 1901, the plaster traveled to the Pan-American Exposition and was subsequently purchased by the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy. Acquired by the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, Cornish, N.H., where it was exhibited from 1959 to 1996. The site became Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, a unit of the National Park Service, in 1965. The cast has now come to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, on long-term loan. Conservation of the Memorial: First modeled by the artist in clay, then molded and cast in sections, the plaster version of the Shaw Memorial was constructed of twenty-one major sections and more than thirty smaller ones -- such as the rifles -- allowing it to be dismantled and reassembled for different exhibitions. Each move required installing metal and wood supports in the back, filling and finishing section joins, and providing an overall, unifying surface treatment. The installation at the National Gallery marks the ninth time that the sculpture has been dismantled and reassembled. During the past year, a new stainless steel armature has been designed, the plaster has been stabilized and restored, and the surface newly treated. Based on archival documentation and physical evidence obtained by technical examination of microscopic surface samples, the current conservation treatment attempts to reproduce the appearance of the work during Saint-Gaudens' day, when it was covered with delicately toned gold and brass leaf.
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Wikipedia Description: Robert Gould Shaw Memorial
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment is a bronze relief sculpture, by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, located at 24 Beacon Street, in Boston Common.

The sculpture depicts the 54th Regiment marching down Beacon Street on May 28, 1863. The monument was unveiled on May 31, 1897.

The inscription reads:
(On face of relief:)
OMNIA RELINQVIT
SEVARE REMPVBLICAM

Translation from Latin to English: "He left behind everything to save the Republic."

On pedestal under the relief, lines from James Russell Lowell's poem "Memoriae Positum": "Right in the van of the red rampart's slippery / swell with heart that beat a charge he fell / forward as fits a man: but the high soul burns / on to light men's feet where death for noble / ends makes dying sweet."

Carved on back of monument, 1894 text by Charles W. Norton:
"The White Officers taking life and honor in their hands cast in their lot with men of a despised race unproven in war and risked death as inciters of servile insurrection if taken prisoners besides encountering all the common perils of camp march and battle. The Black rank and file volunteered when disaster clouded the Union Cause. Served without pay for eighteen months till given that of white troops. Faced threatened enslavement if captured. Were brave in action. Patient under heavy and dangerous labors. And cheerful amid hardships and privations. Together they gave to the Nation and the World undying proof that Americans of African descent possess the pride, courage and devotion of the patriot soldier. One hundred and eighty thousand such Americans enlisted under the Union Flag in MDCCCLXIII-MDCCCLXV.
signed"

Restored plaster cast at the National Gallery of Art:

A plaster cast, which exhibited at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, is at the National Gallery of Art, on loan by the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire.
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