1894 & 1887 Saint-Gaudens Bas-relief Sculptures
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GUEST:
The gentleman nearest you is my great-great-grandfather, and he was friends with Augustus Saint-Gaudens. And the story I always heard was that Saint-Gaudens was working on his Lincoln statue for Chicago's park, and my great-great-grandfather, Charles Cotesworth Beaman, said, "Why don't you come up to Cornish, New Hampshire, where I live? There's lots of Lincoln-like men." And so Saint-Gaudens came up there, and he rented a house from my great-great-grandfather, and he bought the house from my great-great-grandfather, supposedly in trade for doing a portrait of him and his wife.
APPRAISER:
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, certainly a, a king of American sculpture in the 19th century. I think his best-known is his memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment, um, in Boston. It was the first public, uh, sculpture commemorating African American soldiers. A true sort of immigrant success story. His family came from Ireland. At a young age, he, uh, worked as a cameo carver. He showed promise, he was sent off by his family to study in Paris, split his time between countries, but settled in, in Cornish. So we've got your great-great-grandfather here, and then the subject here is Robert Louis Stevenson. Is there any connection there or...
GUEST:
Not to the family, that I know of, except that my dad always loved "Treasure Island," so... (laughs) So he really...
APPRAISER:
Who doesn't?
GUEST:
He really cherished this piece.
APPRAISER:
Yeah.
GUEST:
Um, but other than that, I think it probably just was given to Beaman at some point by Saint-Gaudens and then came down through the family.
APPRAISER:
Saint-Gaudens traveled in artistic circles. Like, he was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, offered to do this portrait, which is very well-executed. He's sort of reclining, reading, he's got a book or paper sort of resting on his knee there. Fine casting detail and subtleties. It's three-dimensional, but it's very subtle. So, both in bronze, they have their original oak frames, certainly look of the period. The Beaman portrait is dated 1894. The Robert Louis Stevenson is dated 1887. And this has come up at auction with some frequency. I would say at auction, uh, between $8,000 and $12,000. The Beaman, this, again, I, I love the scale and the way it's presented. And even though not as widely as appealing subject matter, I think the value is going to be a little closer because of condition-- a better surface to it, um, smaller. But I still think you're looking in the $6,000 to $8,000 range.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
Um, so they're both just wonderful examples of an artist who's pretty much beyond compare in that time period, and it's just a treat to see.
GUEST:
Oh, okay, thank you so much.
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