Hiawatha

Augustus Saint-Gaudens American

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 700

Saint-Gaudens’s three years of study in Paris came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. He left for Rome in late 1870 and soon began Hiawatha, his first full-length statue, inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855). Seated on a rock in a contemplative pose, with his quiver of arrows and bow nearby, the fictional Ojibwe chief is "pondering, musing in the forest /On the welfare of his people," as an excerpt from Longfellow’s verse inscribed on the base declares. Saint-Gaudens was one of many artists who drew thematic inspiration from the poet's "Hiawatha," reinforcing the stereotype of the "vanishing" Native American.


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Hiawatha, Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, Dublin 1848–1907 Cornish, New Hampshire), Marble, American

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Hiawatha, Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, Dublin 1848–1907 Cornish, New Hampshire), Marble, American
Hiawatha, Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, Dublin 1848–1907 Cornish, New Hampshire), Marble, American

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