"Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw"

Illustration 1Shaw Memorial it the Boston Common

Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw is cast of bronze and stands 11x14 feet is located on the Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts.

There is also a plaster cast that was made an exhibited in France (which is slightly different than the "official version" which ended up in his home town of Cornish, New Hampshire. That one is pictured below.

Illustration 2Plast cast version in Cornish, New Hampshire

Originally, it was going to be simply another solider monument devoted to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. But over time and through various influences, it ended up including the soldiers on which "his claim to fame rested" (Savage, 197). One of the initial designs that was agree upon was to have tree relief tablets which depict the history of the Fifty-Fourth from the time they left Boston, to the Battle of Fort Wagner, and finally the return of any of the surviving membes. Shaw would be mounted on the horse. His family was not terribly supportive of the idea of him being on the horse. This was normally the position that a high-ranking officer would take while in the back. Shaw was a Colonel and lead his men from the front. They felt he should be at the same level as them (Savage, 198). Even though he was a man of privelege, coming from a well known Boston abolitionist family, he felt it was his duty to lead these black men, despite the odds and possibility of ridicule.

Having the black men in the monument was a change, making it "the first monument representing bona fide black soliders in proper uniform" (Savage, 200). Gaudens tried hard to not make the men just copies of each other, generic stereotypes of blacks. But rather, each was to be unique, holding his gun slightly different, wearing his hat different and so on.

The orator William James was on of the people who saw it also as a depiction of the end of slavery. Black and white men were fighting alongside each other. To him, the monument was so realistic that "the dark outcasts, so true to nature that one can almost hear them breathing as they march".

[Analysis]

Other Links:

For the Union Dead – Robert Lowell (1960)

Robert Gould Shaw – Paul Laurence Dunbar

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