Stan and Gus: Art, Ardor, and the Friendship That Built the Gilded Age

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How the architect Stanford White and the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens transcended scandal to enrich their times. Stanford White was a louche man-about-town and a canny cultural entrepreneur-the creator of landmark buildings that elevated American architecture to new heights. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the son of an immigrant shoemaker, a moody introvert, and a committed procrastinator whose painstaking work brought emotional depth to American sculpture. They met when Stan was walking down the street and heard Gus whistling Mozart in his studio. They pursued their own careers in Italy and France, then came together again in New York, where they maintained an intimate friendship and partnership that defined the art of the Gilded Age. Over the course of decades, White would help sustain his friend's troubled spirits and vouch for Saint-Gaudens when he failed to complete projects. Meanwhile, Saint-Gaudens would challenge White to take his artistic gifts seriously-and so it went amid brilliant commissions and sordid debaucheries all the way to White's sensational murder by an enraged husband in 1906. In Stan and Gus, the acclaimed historian Henry Wiencek sets the two men's relationship within the larger story of the American Renaissance, where millionaires' commissions and delusions of grandeur collided with secret upper-class clubs, new aesthetic ideas, and two ambitious young men to yield work of lasting beauty.

Author Bio

Henry Wiencek, a nationally prominent historian and writer, is the author of several books, including The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999; An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Award; and Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.