Head of Victory
Augustus SAINT-GAUDENS
(American, born Ireland, 1848 - 1907)
Head of Victory
Dateca. 1905
Mediumgilded bronze
Dimensionsobject with base: 12 1/4 × 7 1/2 × 6 in. (31.1 × 19.1 × 15.2 cm)
object: 8 1/4 x 7 1/2 x 6 in. (21 x 19.1 x 15.2 cm)
base: 4 x 4 x 4 in. (10.2 x 10.2 x 10.2 cm)
ClassificationSCULPTURE
Credit LineSBMA, Museum Purchase, with funds provided by the Suzette and Eugene Davidson Fund
Object number1992.70
Subject(s)
- women
Collection
- 20th century American
On View
Not on viewCollections
Label TextSaint-Gaudens was the leading American sculptor of his generation, responsible for many major public monuments in bronze. This small head of a classical personification of Victory is related to one of the last and most famous of his public commissions: an equestrian sculpture of General Tecumseh Sherman, whose victory signaled the end of the American civil war. Saint-Gaudens completed the sculpture in 1903 and it still stands at Fifth Avenue and East 60th Street in New York. The fierce expression of Victory with her mouth agape in awe of the future that will unfold with the coming of peace recalls French monumental sculptures of the previous age, such as François Rude’s La Marseillaise, which Saint-Gaudens would have known through his years of study at the École des beaux-arts in Paris.
