Augustus Saint-Gaudens 1848 - 1907

Charles Deering (gift from the artist)
Roger Deering (his son)
Harry and Clyda Bailey, circa 1936 (gift from the above)
By descent to the present owner (their grandson)

Jeanne L. Wasserman, ed., Metamorphoses in Nineteenth-Century Sculpture, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975, pp. 201-17, illustration of another example p. 208
John H. Dryfhout, The Work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Hanover, New Hampshire and London, 1982, illustration of another example no. 154-6
Thayer Tolles, ed., American Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1999, vol. I, illustration of another example p. 308
Thayer Tolles, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 1848-1907: A Master of American Sculpture, 1999, illustration of another example p. 124
Thayer Tolles, Augustus Saint-Gaudens in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Haven, Connecticut and London, 2009, illustration of another example fig. 42, p. 34

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the most celebrated American sculptor of his day, created Diana—arguably his best known sculpture—as a weathervane for Madison Square Garden in New York. The fantastic complex of Madison Square Garden was designed by Saint-Gaudens’ equally well-known friend and frequent collaborator, Stanford White. Madison Square Garden at that time was an elegant multi-use building featuring convention halls, an amphitheater, dining rooms, party spaces, galleries, and concert venues, all built in Italian Renaissance style with opulent marble interiors. This extraordinarily diverse complex was punctuated by a 300 foot tower inspired by the Giralda, the bell tower of the Cathedral of Seville, Spain.

The monumental figure of Diana served as a gilded copper weathervane for the top of Madison Square Garden’s tower, the highest point in Manhattan. The original 18 foot sculpture was too large in scale so was reduced to 13 feet and installed in 1894; this version is now in the collection of Philadelphia Museum of Art. The landmark Diana sculpture was so well-known and popular that Saint-Gaudens immediately acquired the copyright for the model and produced an edition of reductions with variations in details such as base, sphere, bow and hair.

The present work comes from the celebrated collection of Charles Deering (1852–1927). Deering, the President of the International Harvester Company, was extremely prosperous, and developed a love of collecting art. Well acquainted with artists such as John Singer Sargent, and Anders Zorn, Deering was one of Saint-Gaudens’ best customers and friends and was known to have bought several of the sculptor's reductions throughout his career. Though there are many similar versions of the reductions of Diana, this example is larger than is typical.