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Featured Upcoming Book
Striking Change: The Great Artistic Collaboration of Theodore Roosevelt and Augustus Saint-Gaudens
President Theodore Roosevelt called the project his “pet crime.” In truth it was one of his greatest gifts to America.
In 1905 Roosevelt challenged the brilliant and famous sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The United States is the best nation on Earth, but its coins are atrociously hideous. Why can we not produce coinage as beautiful as that of the ancient Greeks?
Striking Change offers a fresh new look at the life of Saint-Gaudens—the man and the artist—and the remarkable partnership he forged with Theodore Roosevelt to reinvigorate the country’s numismatic art. Author Michael Moran explores Saint-Gaudens’s coin designs in the context of his monumental sculptures and American culture of the time. Through first-person accounts, behind-the-scenes conversations, and explosive public drama, we come to know the larger-than-life personalities involved in this renaissance of fine art. Striking Change illuminates the politics, the genius, the struggles, and ultimately the triumph of an extraordinary American journey.
Here, Q. David Bowers talks about Striking Change: The Great Artistic Collaboration Between Theodore Roosevelt and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, available this December.
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Sample pages from the upcoming book.
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“To the numismatist, or coin collector, Augustus Saint-Gaudens stands high as the creator of what many believe to be America’s most beautiful circulating coin—the double eagle or $20 gold piece dated MCMVII (1907), produced in sculptured relief, a brilliant work of art. In the same year the artist’s $10 gold eagle made an appearance: a different design, with Miss Liberty in an Indian headdress, with a stalwart eagle on the reverse. This, too, has been a favorite. By 1907, which also was the year of Saint-Gaudens’s passing, he had been accomplished in medallic art for many years, with achievements including a memorable medal for the 100th anniversary in 1889 of George Washington’s first inauguration, and one side of a controversial award medal intended for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, and more.
Today, American numismatists regularly honor Saint-Gaudens. He is discussed in extensive comments in auction and sale catalogs. There have been several fine books relating to double eagles and gold coins, and various exhibits, such as one mounted a few years ago at the headquarters of the American Numismatic Association in Colorado Springs, and another at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City in 2007.
Separately, without a great deal of overlap, admirers and students of art recognize Saint-Gaudens for his sculptures, some of heroic proportions, such as the Shaw Memorial in Boston across the street from the State House, and the Sherman Victory group on a pedestal at the Grand Army Plaza at the southeast corner of New York’s Central Park, right across from the famous Plaza Hotel. (The goddess in that group, variously known as Victory or Fame, was the inspiration for the aforementioned MCMVII $20 gold coin.)
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Sample pages from the upcoming book.
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A third emphasis is the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site itself, in Cornish, New Hampshire, a magnet for thousands of visitors annually, who come from all over the nation—and, indeed, the world—to see where the artist lived, visit his studio, and view many of his sculptured works. Although his passing was more than a century ago, on August 3, 1907, in many ways Saint-Gaudens lives today. His art, numismatic as well as sculptural, is timeless.
In Striking Change, Michael F. Moran combines the biography of the artist, the story of his sculptures, and the development of coins and medals into a single volume that tells about everything one might want to know concerning how these were produced, plus many facts, anecdotes, and interesting side trips to areas one might not have imagined.
Among the multiple attractions of the present book, the illustrations are beyond superb—more than have ever appeared in any other numismatically oriented reference on this artist.
The text is particularly valuable in showcasing the sculptor’s activities with important numismatic projects beyond the famous 1907 coinage. While the story of the coins has been told in depth in several places, including in Renaissance of American Coinage 1906–1908 (Burdette, 2007) and United States Gold Coins: An Illustrated History (Bowers, 1982), treatment of the important medals has ranged from scarcely anything, to light sketches. Striking Change ends that.
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Sample pages from the upcoming book.
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Further, the author gives a comprehensive look at the design competition for new United States coins in 1891. This involved quite a bit of effort at the time, but ultimately ended as a non-event, as outside artists consulted in the competition did not seem to have created motifs that anyone liked—and Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber of the United States Mint ended up creating new motifs for the dime, quarter, and half dollar. We learn then, and also later, that in many ways Saint-Gaudens was an idealist, desiring artistic high-relief, sculptured-effect coins as objects of art, in a world of mechanical coin production in which high-speed presses needed to stamp these things out like so many tokens, without being able to have the designs in high relief.
The World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 forms a focus for another adventure with Saint-Gaudens, who was involved in designing the fair’s award medal. The ensuing events, brought on in part by Saint-Gaudens’s towering ego, turned into a fiasco and marked a low point in his professional career. The end result, much to the sculptor’s disgust, was a medal with his obverse muled to a reverse designed by Chief Engraver Barber. The resulting ill will on the part of both men was still raw more than a decade later, when Saint-Gaudens undertook President Theodore Roosevelt’s commission to redesign the American coinage.
As is already well known to many readers, but which is amplified in fascinating detail in Striking Change, the numismatic high point of Saint-Gaudens’s career occurred in 1905, when Roosevelt met with the sculptor, later corresponding in detail, encouraging him to redesign all United States coins from the cent to the $20 gold piece. This relationship had its own set of complications, again resulting in confrontations and clashes with Chief Engraver Barber. The president of the United States took the side of Saint-Gaudens, ignoring the highest engraving position in the government mint—this certainly being an interesting footnote in political as well as numismatic history. All the details are played out in Moran’s text, with the result that anyone interested in Saint-Gaudens, or who owns one of the coins, will be greatly enriched by reading through the following pages, savoring all of the details.
Every good novel, at least, should have a hero and a villain; in the present saga, Augustus Saint-Gaudens fills the first role and Chief Engraver Charles Barber, to perhaps oversimplify, the second. As to “love interests,” another element of novels and film, Saint-Gaudens had a way with women, as the text notes. President Theodore (“Teddy”) Roosevelt and his influential wife Edith earn their share of the limelight as well.
Although the historical and numismatic narrative and details are the main focus of this book, it is entertaining as well. The net result is a “good read,” in modern parlance—a book that will inform as well as delight. It certainly will be a welcome addition to the literature currently available on Augustus Saint-Gaudens, without question the most famous artist ever to be associated with American coins and medals.
My congratulations to Michael Moran for a job well done.”
MORE PRAISE FOR STRIKING CHANGE
“Readers will find the characters and events fascinating and indicative of the close-knit world of art and politics in the era of Theodore Roosevelt.”
—from the foreword by Henry J. Duffy, curator, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire
“Striking Change is a thoughtful exploration that gives first-person accounts of how Saint-Gaudens’s sculpture, medals, and coins were designed and executed. It reveals the inner workings and subtleties of the sculptural process, from proposal to finished work.”
—Michael Richman, author, Daniel Chester French: An American Sculptor
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