Art News

Metropolitan Museum acquires Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ "The Man (Standing Lincoln)"

NEW YORK, NY.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired one of only 16 known casts of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Abraham Lincoln, the Man (Standing Lincoln), a rare, authorized reduction of the large bronze monument that the sculptor originally created for Lincoln Park in Chicago between 1884 and 1887. The Met’s 40-1/2-inch-high bronze statuette was one of a limited number authorized by the artist (1848-1907) under the terms of his estate and cast between 1911 and the early 1920s by Tiffany Studios and Gorham Manufacturing Co. The sculptor himself planned the limited edition castings, and their production was supervised by Saint-Gaudens’s mold makers, founders, and studio assistants. After Saint-Gaudens’s death, his widow marketed the castings for museum, library, and domestic display. The Met’s bronze almost certainly dates to 1911, and based on its early documented provenance, was one of the fir