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New Acquisition

The Samuel D. Chapin family donated The Puritan by Augustus Saint-Gaudens to the Smithsonian American Art Museum last year.

This work is a reduction of the monumental bronze sculpture, The Puritan (1883–1886), commissioned by Chester W. Chapin as a public memorial to his ancestor Deacon Samuel Chapin, a founder of Springfield, Massachusetts. The statue was installed in Springfield in a park designed by noted architect Stanford White in 1887 but was later relocated to another site in the city.

Saint-Gaudens represents Chapin as the embodiment of a puritan leader, striding forth with his cape billowing. In the 1890s the sculptor began to make reductions of The Puritan, reworking the smaller pieces so they were not copies but renditions of the larger work.

Pictured: Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 1848 Ireland–1907 USA, The Puritan, about 1899, bronze, 31 x 19 1/2 x 13 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Samuel D. Chapin Family.