PPS Picturing America:

A Representation of America in the Robert Shaw Memorial

"Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship."

Frederick Douglass

General Objective   It is the goal of this presentation to represent a portion of a unit of

study from the NEH's Picturing America series.

  This unit along with the corresponding work in partnership with the Carnegie Museums of Art will formulate a unique approach to Arts integration in the Pittsburgh Public Schools middle school curriculum

  The focus of this lesson is: Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Students will put themselves in the shoes of the men of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment as they: read, write, create a comic strip about these American heroes and render sketches in response to their findings.

  Subject Areas Art & Culture: Visual Arts History and Social Studies: U.S. History — Civil War and Reconstruction

Standards Alignment The Massachusetts 54th Regiment:

Honoring the Heroes NAES-VisArts(5-8) 2

Using knowledge of structures and functions

NAES-VisArts(5-8) 4 Understanding the visual arts in relation to history and cultures

NCSS-5 Individuals, groups, and institutions. more

NCSS-6 Power, authority, and governance. more

*modify according to your state and/or district standards...

Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Charles McKim , The Robert Shaw Memorial, 1884-1896 (Boston Common)

  Describe the main attributes of the product   Link the product attributes to customer needs

Acitivities Related to the Work, Including the 'gesture sketch'

http://www.artgraphica.net/free-art-lessons/wetcanvas/gesture-sketches/gesture-sketches.htm

  Activity 1. Look and Think

  Activity 2. Read, Answer, and Discuss

  Activity 3. Strike a Pose!

  Assessment Activity 4. Create a Comic Strip

Objectives and Questions Learning Objectives:

Students completing this unit should be able to:

• Understand how Saint-Gaudens expressed the heroism of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment in the Shaw Memorial.

• Discuss the role that Robert Gould Shaw played in the Civil War.

• Discuss the impact that African American soldiers, particularly of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, had on the Civil War.

Guiding Questions:

• How did Saint-Gaudens show the heroism of a military regiment and their commander in the Shaw Memorial?

• What characteristics did the men who served in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment possess?

How might a sculpture of your own depict Americans today in the military? Is it likely that

Why is it important to remember those who came before us and served their country?

Who might you follow as a leader in your community? How might yo see contemporary works depicting our current war...?

  Explain the steps that now need to be taken

What might these people say? http://mac110.assumption.edu/aas/Reports/harpftwagner.html

Representation of the Form of the Face

• ··Free on line drawing class

• The best Online Drawing courses. Practice your Art for free!

  www.manolith.com

  http://www.screwbald.com/tutorial-gesture.htm

• ··Paint & Color Boston

  Sara Egan Studio Color Consulting 617.306.7614, Commercial and Res.

  www.saraegan.com

*move to activity...gesture sketches

Augustus Saint-Gaudens   Sculptor

Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin in 1884 to a French shoemaker and Irish mother. As a baby, his family moved to New York City. At 13 he was apprenticed to a cameo carver. He took free evening art courses at Cooper Union and then studied in Paris at the Academy of Design, and the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1870 he moved to Rome, began his art career, and met Augusta Homer, a cousin of Winslow Homer. They married when he received his first major commission, to create a statue of Admiral Farragut in Madison Square Park in New York.

  Robert Shaw Memorial Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s first idea for a sculpture honoring Colonel Robert G. Shaw was an equestrian statue. But, Shaw’s family rejected it as too pretentious for the 26-year old colonel. Then Saint-Gaudens conceived a bas-relief (“bas” from the French for low) of Shaw with his men. During the twelve years that Saint-Gaudens worked on this memorial, he sculpted 40 clay studies of African American heads but only included 16 in the final sculpture. He bought a horse to use as a model. When it died, he rented another from a stable. The relief of the horse and rider are a freestanding sculpture. Saint-Gaudens’s friend, architect Charles Follen McKim, designed the architectural setting for the bronze sculpture. Saint-Gaudens included allegorical symbols to suggest this sculpture’s meaning. The angel floating above the soldiers holds an olive branch representing peace and poppies for death and remembrance. Saint-Gaudens created a steady marching rhythm across the sculpture with the soldiers, horse, and angel facing same direction, moving resolutely to the right. Overlapping figures create a sense of depth and unity. Our eyes pick out and group the repeated shapes.

http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=790

 Related EDSITEment Lesson Plans

• ··I've Just Seen a Face: Portraits

• ··Images at War

• ··An Introduction to the Relationship Between Composition and Content in the Visual Arts

• ··Portrait of a Hero

• ··The American Civil War: A “Terrible Swift Sword”

• Lesson 1: ··On the Eve of War: North vs. South

• Lesson 2: ··The Battles of the Civil War

• Lesson 3: ··Abraham Lincoln and Wartime Politics

• ··The Emancipation Proclamation: Freedom’s First Steps

 Selected EDSITEment Websites • ··Augustus Saint-Gaudens Shaw Memorial, 1900

U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire

• ··Digital Classroom (National Archives and Records Administration) [http://www.archives.gov]

• ··Teaching with Documents: Lesson Plans

• ··Teaching With Documents: The Fight for Equal Rights: Black Soldiers in the Civil War

• ··American Originals (includes casualty list of the “54th,” photo of veterans with Shaw Memorial)

• ··The National Gallery of Art [http://www.nga.gov]

• ··August Saint-Gaudens: The Shaw Memorial, School Arts: Looking/Learning

• ··NGAKIDS – National Gallery (complete coverage of Shaw Memorial Exhibition with lesson plans)

• ··National Park Service – History and Culture, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site [http://www.nps.gov/saga]

• ··PBS American Masters [http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/]

• ··American Masters Database; Visual Arts

• ··Augustus Saint-Gaudens

• ··Art History Resources on the Web: 19th Century

• ··The Sculpture of Augustus St. Gaudens

• ··Picturing America

Inspiration

The Shaw Memorial, in Boston Common, depicts a resonant, courageous act of the Civil War, in which the first regiment of

African American soldiers recruited for the Union Army fought a doomed battle on a South Carolina fortress.

Although Colonel Robert Shaw, on horseback, is prominent, the bronze relief is the first American memorial dedicated to

individuals united for a cause, rather than to a single military hero.

Le Finit!

  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15280

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic sandpiles in the heart of Boston. A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders braces the tingling Statehouse, ...

  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19585