Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, 1848-1907) Victory, conceived 1892, cast between 1912 and the early 1920s Gilded bronze 38-1/2 inches (97.8 cm) high x 35 inches (88.9 cm) wide x 21 inches (53.3 cm) deep Inscribed along proper left of base: AVGVSTVS SAINT GAVDEN / FECIT·M·C·M·II Inscribed along base: COPYRIGHT · BY · AH · SAINT · GAVDENS· / 1912 Separately marked on reverse: 999 PROVENANCE: Richard York Gallery, New York; Private collection, New Canaan, Connecticut, acquired from the above, 2000; Estate of the above. EXHIBITED: "The Winter Antiques Show," New York, January 2000. LITERATURE: J.H. Dryfhout, The Work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1982, p. 256, figs. 184-9, another example illustrated; J.A. Gordon, Cast in the Shadow: Models for Public Sculpture in America, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1985, pp. 68-69, fig. 29, another example illustrated; Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., From the Studio: Selections of American Sculpture, 1811-1941, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1986, pp. 44-45, no. 28, another example illustrated; M.A. Goley, B. Wilkinson, Augustus Saint-Gaudens: American Sculptor, From the Collection of the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1992, p. VIII, no. 33; Musée des Augustins & Blérancourt, Musée franco-américain du Château de Blérancourt, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, exhibition catalogue, Toulouse, France, 1999, pp. 138-39, no. 35, another example illustrated; T. Tolles, American Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born before 1865, Vol. I, New York, 1999, pp. 318-20, no. 139, another example illustrated; The Magazine Antiques, February 2000, n.p., illustrated; T. Tolles, Augustus Saint-Gaudens in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 41, fig. 47, another example illustrated. Augustus Saint-Gaudens's Victory brings together several of the artist's greatest strengths: the expressive study of the human figure, a command of classical imagery, and the ability to give abstract ideals a convincing physical presence. Conceived for his monument to General William Tecumseh Sherman, the winged figure leads the mounted commander forward, transforming a military portrait into a larger statement about triumph and the promise of peace. As an independent sculpture, she retains that commanding presence. The present bronze belongs to the small group of posthumous reductions that brought one of America's most celebrated public sculptures into a more intimate setting. Saint-Gaudens began the Sherman monument in 1892, developing it over more than a decade in New York, Paris, and Cornish, New Hampshire. Unveiled on May 30, 1903, the monument stands at Grand Army Plaza, at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street in New York (COMP IMAGE). Its composition joins two distinct forms of representation: Sherman and his horse are firmly grounded in the physical world, while Victory introduces an allegorical dimension. Moving ahead of the general, she gives direction and purpose to the entire group. Her presence makes the monument as much about the meaning assigned to military achievement as about the commander himself. The figure draws upon a long tradition of winged personifications of victory. Her advancing posture and animated drapery recall the Hellenistic Winged Victory of Samothrace, (COMP IMAGE) while the commanding female protagonist of Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (COMP IMAGE) offers another important precedent. Saint-Gaudens could study both works at the Louvre. He translated these sources into a figure whose authority depends on the balance between bodily weight and apparent flight. Her feet advance across the ground, her wings rise behind her, and her garments register the movement of the body beneath them. The laurel crown and palm frond identify her as Victory, but the sculpture's emotional force extends beyond these traditional attributes. The outstretched arm directs attention forward; the lifted head and parted lips suggest conviction and anticipation. Writing about the monument, the painter and critic Kenyon Cox observed that she "half walks, half flies," recognizing the tension that gives the figure its extraordinary vitality. His interpretation emphasized the destination toward which she leads: "peace is ahead and an end of war" (as quoted in T. Tolles, ed., American Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. I, New York, 1999, p. 318). The monument also inspired a more irreverent response. In a 1931 article, Time recounted the reaction of Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal and a former Confederate scout. Seeing Sherman on horseback with the winged figure advancing before him, Watterson reportedly quipped: "Just like the damn Yankees to make the lady walk" ("Art: Useless Beast," Time, February 23, 1931). The joke turns classical allegory into a question of everyday manners, offering a memorable measure of the sculpture's accessibility. Even in jest, Watterson's attention fell on the woman who gives the monument its direction and purpose. For the principal model, Saint-Gaudens turned to Harriette Eugenia "Hettie" Anderson, who posed for him in 1897 (COMP IMAGE). A Black woman born Harriette Eugenia Dickerson in Columbia, South Carolina, Anderson was living in New York by the mid-1890s. Saint-Gaudens called her "the handsomest model I have ever seen of either sex" and admired her gift for "posing patiently, steadily and thoroughly" (as quoted in E.M. Kahn, "The Woman Who Was Victory. . .," The Magazine ANTIQUES, October 29, 2021). Her role is essential to understanding Victory: the sculpture's idealized form developed through close study of an individual whose physical control helped make its ambitious pose possible. The resulting figure combines the authority of classical allegory with the observed presence of a living model. Her presence extended across painting, printmaking, and sculpture. John La Farge used Anderson for the central personification of Nature in Athens (1898), his mural for the Walker Art Building at Bowdoin College (Bowdoin College Museum of Art, August 28, 2025). Anders Zorn captured her at rest behind the sculptor in his 1897 etching Augustus Saint-Gaudens and His Model,(COMP IMAGE) preserving a glimpse of the studio life from which Victory emerged (W.E. Hagans, "Saint-Gaudens, Zorn, and the Goddesslike Miss Anderson," American Art, vol. 16, no. 2, Summer 2002). Daniel Chester French likewise relied on Anderson for important commissions, including Truth for the bronze doors of the Boston Public Library, The Spirit of Life in Saratoga Springs, and Mourning Victory for the Melvin Memorial in Concord, Massachusetts. His praise of her "perfect faithfulness and thoroughness and conscientiousness" conveys the professional esteem she earned (French to Henry Watson Kent, September 15, 1917, Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, as quoted in Kahn, op. cit.). Sculptors Evelyn Beatrice Longman and Adolph Alexander Weinman also employed her (Kahn, op. cit.). Anderson also defended her stake in the art she helped create. Saint-Gaudens gave her the first study for Victory's head, a portrait bust distinct from the completed allegorical figure (WE SOLD THIS! SHOW COMP IMAGE). In 1908, she registered a copyright for the work and declined the family's request to reproduce it, protecting the value of the version she owned (Kahn, op. cit.; N. Silver, "Hettie Anderson: Model for Augustus Saint-Gaudens," Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, February 16, 2021). She understood the value of her own image and insisted on a say in its future. Saint-Gaudens continued refining the figure even as preparations for casting proceeded. In a letter to his Paris molder, he requested that, if the head had not yet been cast, the laurel leaves be made "a little bit more pointed" (as quoted in J.H. Dryfhout, The Work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1982, p. 254). Such a seemingly minor adjustment reveals the care with which the artist considered the relationship between detail and overall effect. The crown's sharper contours would contribute to the definition of the head, just as the folds of the drapery and the arrangement of the feathers reinforce the figure's movement. The sculpture also occupies an important place in the history of American coinage, and therein also a place in the final act of Saint-Gaudens's career. President Theodore Roosevelt deeply admired Saint-Gaudens's Sherman monument and went to great lengths to secure the services of the sculptor to create new designs for American coinage "that would have some beauty" (as quoted in President Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw, December 27, 1904) COMP IMAGE OF LETTER!. Their subsequent collaboration on the nation's gold coins carried the ambitions of public sculpture into the world of commerce. Both men looked to ancient Greek coins as evidence that money could be useful and beautiful. A coin offered something a monument could not: a work of art that could pass from hand to hand. That work of art was the translation of Victory into Liberty. The most celebrated result was the 1907 twenty dollar gold piece, or Double Eagle (COMP IMAGE: 1907 ULTRA HIGH RELIEF). Saint-Gaudens sculpted the figure of Liberty advancing with Victory's purposeful stride, flowing drapery, and commanding presence. Holding a torch and an olive branch, with the Capitol behind her, she translates the sculptor's monumental language into a small, circular field. The change in scale preserves the figure's authority while giving her a new role as an emblem of the nation. Of the design, Treasury Secretary George B. Courtelyou wrote: "The relief of the new double eagle and eagle is the highest of that of coins issued by any country. The execution of the designs for these coins was the last effort of the great American sculptor and the crowning work of a notable career" (as quoted in G.B. Courtelyou, Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of Finances, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, June 30, 1908, p. 43). Saint-Gaudens's adaptation of the figure for the double eagle ultimately revealed the practical tensions between the artistic majesty of his work and the mechanical capabilities of the Mint at the time. The experimental Ultra High Relief and subsequent High Relief versions of the Double Eagle brought exceptional sculptural depth to the design, but required repeated strikes that made large-scale production of the coins impractical. By the end of 1907, and following the famed sculptor's passing, the Mint had developed a lower-relief version, with the date expressed as "1907" in Arabic numerals rather than Saint-Gaudens's original Roman inscription "MCMVII" (COMP IMAGE: 1907 ARABIC NUMERALS). This adaptation made the design practical for mass coinage and established the form of the Double Eagles struck through 1933. While the sculptural relief was sacrificed, Saint-Gaudens's image, rooted in his Victory, survived. That image gained a new life in 1986, when Saint-Gaudens's Liberty was adapted for the obverse, or front, of the American Gold Eagle bullion coins. Her continued appearance on the series through 2026 marks forty years of renewed use (COMP IMAGE: AMERICAN GOLD EAGLE). Made for investment and collecting, these coins have carried his design to a worldwide audience, securing its place among the most recognizable images in American coinage. In 2009, the United States Mint returned to the sculptural ambition of the original with its Ultra High Relief Double Eagle (COMP IMAGE: 2009 ULTRA HIGH RELIEF). Digitally mapping Saint-Gaudens's surviving coin plasters, the Mint used modern technology to achieve the pronounced modeling that had resisted mass production a century earlier. Together, these successive versions show how an artistic idea can accommodate changing purposes without losing its identity. In Victory, we encounter the monumental conception behind that enduring image: a figure whose forward movement would help shape America's visual identity in bronze and gold. Although Victory was admired during Saint-Gaudens's lifetime, the bronze reductions followed his death in 1907, when his widow, Augusta, arranged for a reduced plaster model. The exact number of casts is not known, but no more than a dozen are believed to have been produced. Examples entered distinguished institutional collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Arlington National Cemetery, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the University of Delaware. A bronze reduction and a plaster are also preserved at the artist's former home and studio in Cornish, New Hampshire, the site of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial and now Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park. Notable examples in private collections have appeared at auction, including the cast from the estate of Richard J. "Dick" Schwartz, sold at Christie's in 2017, and another from the Wolf Family Collection, sold at Sotheby's in 2023. These smaller versions allow the figure to be studied independently, revealing the complexity of a design originally intended to be seen within a large outdoor monument. In a poignant later chapter, Anderson became a classroom attendant at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which by then owned both Saint-Gaudens's Victory and French's Mourning Victory: idealized versions of the woman working within its walls (Kahn, op. cit.). Indeed, Victory stands at the intersection of Saint-Gaudens's greatest achievements in American sculpture and coinage. With its commanding presence and direct connection to one of New York's defining monuments, this rare bronze offers collectors an opportunity to own a work whose influence extends far beyond its original setting. It embodies the ambition that shaped Saint-Gaudens's career: to give American ideals a powerful and lasting form. HID12401132022 © 2026 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved www.HA.com/TexasAuctioneerLicenseNotice

"The Winter Antiques Show," New York, January 2000.

Richard York Gallery, New York; Private collection, New Canaan, Connecticut, acquired from the above, circa March 2000; Estate of the above.

Condition report available upon request. Overall dimensions measure 38-1/2 x 35 x 21 inches.