Hunting Season

Follow Diana, goddess of the hunt, to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, where our traveling show The Gilded Age: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum closes tomorrow!

This exhibition includes about sixty major artworks that capture the brilliance of turn-of-the-century society and a new current of sophistication in America.

"Great ambition characterized this period in America," said Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "Artists and patrons rose to new heights, as the 1876 Centennial engendered a strong sense of national pride and eagerness to match Europe's aristocracies."

With Diana, Augustus Saint-Gaudens harkens back to classical Rome. This small sculpture is a first study for the huge figure of the mythical huntress Diana, fashioned in gilded copper, that once stood atop the old Madison Square Garden in New York. Like many artists of the Gilded Age, Saint-Gaudens looked to the classical past for inspiration. Combining athletic form with formal grace, pure in proportion and line from all angles, the sculpture pays homage to antiquity and to America's cultural aspirations at the turn of the century.

Source: Richard Murray. The Gilded Age: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).

Pictured: Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 1848 Ireland–1907 USA, Diana, 1889, bronze, 24 7/8 x 12 5/8 x 13 3/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly.