Victory

Artist:: Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, Dublin 1848–1907 Cornish, New Hampshire)

Date:: 1892–1903; this cast, 1914 or after (by 1916)

Medium:: Bronze, gilt

Dimensions:: 38 x 9 1/2 x 18 1/2 in., (96.5 x 24.1 x 47 cm)

Classification:: Sculpture

Credit Line:: Rogers Fund, 1917

Accession Number:: 17.90.1

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 771

Adapted from the full-size figure of Victory on Saint-Gaudens’s equestrian monument to the Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman (1892–1903; Grand Army Plaza, Manhattan), this winged allegorical figure is depicted as a triumphant guiding force. Her classicizing gown is emblazoned with an eagle, and she wears a crown of laurel and holds a palm frond—both traditional emblems of victory. The windblown pose recalls that of the Hellenistic marble "Nike of Samothrace" (Musée du Louvre, Paris). The principal model for Victory was Hettie Anderson, an African-American woman who was a favored artists’ model in New York during the 1890s.

#4583. Victory

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Signature: [right side of base]: AVGVSTVS • SAINT • GAVDENS / FECIT M • CMII •

Inscription: [back of base]: COPYRIGHT • BY • A • H • SAINT • GAVDENS • / 1912

[Gorham Co., 1914–17]

Essays
Americans in Paris, 1860–1900
Augustus Saint–Gaudens (1848–1907)
The Chiton, Peplos, and Himation in Modern Dress
From Model to Monument: American Public Sculpture, 1865–1915

Timelines
The United States and Canada, 1800–1900 A.D.
The United States and Canada, 1900 A.D.–present