Robert Gould Shaw Memorial
The Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment is a bronze relief sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens opposite 24 Beacon Street, Boston. It depicts Colonel Robert Gould Shaw leading members of the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry as it marched down Beacon Street on May 28, 1863 to depart the city to fight in the South. The sculpture was unveiled on May 31, 1897. This is the first civic monument to pay homage to the heroism of African American soldiers.
Robert Gould Shaw Memorial
The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial after the completed restoration project in 2021.
Inscription on the back of the Memorial
Restored plaster cast at the National Gallery of Art
Augustus Saint-Gaudens was an Irish and American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts generation who embodied the ideals of the American Renaissance. Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin to an Irish-French family, and raised in New York City. He traveled to Europe for further training and artistic study. After he returned to New York City, he achieved major critical success for his monuments commemorating heroes of the American Civil War, many of which still stand. Saint-Gaudens created works such as the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on Boston Common, Abraham Lincoln: The Man, and grand equestrian monuments to Civil War generals: General John Logan Memorial in Chicago's Grant Park and William Tecumseh Sherman at the corner of New York's Central Park. In addition, he created the popular historicist representation of The Puritan.
Saint-Gaudens in 1905
Portrait of Augustus's wife Augusta and their son, Homer Saint-Gaudens, by John Singer Sargent, 1890.
Diana (1892–93). Bronze, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Abraham Lincoln: The Man in Lincoln Park, Chicago (1887)