Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site

Shaw Memorial by Gaudens 1900

Saint-Gaudens received the commission for a monument to Shaw in 1884. His first sketches for an equestrian statue were rejected by the Shaw family as a treatment too grand for a colonel. He then decided to depict Shaw with his men; these soldiers assumed a greater importance as work on the monument progressed. The first finished model of the Shaw was completed in 1896; the Boston monument is the second version, unveiled in Boston on May 21, 1897. Charles F. McKim designed the architectural elements as well as the setting for the monument. Saint-Gaudens continued to work on the Shaw, exhibiting reworked plaster versions in Paris in 1898 and in 1900. It was not until the fourth version, exhibited at the Universal Exposition in 1900, that Saint-Gaudens was fully satisfied with the result. This final plaster version was on display in Cornish until 1996, when the Saint-Gaudens Memorial Trustees, together with the National Park Service, raised funds to cast the relief in bronze. With the bronze on display at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, the original plaster cast is on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.