Sketch of Saint Gaudens's Statue of Deacon Samuel Chapin, Springfield, Massachusetts

Sketch of Saint Gaudens's Statue of Deacon Samuel Chapin, Springfield, Massachusetts

Stanford White

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

"The Puritan" was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day, 1887, in Stearns Square in Springfield, Massachusetts. For this monument to Deacon Samuel Chapin (1598-1675), one of the city’s early settlers, Saint-Gaudens again partnered with Stanford White to produce a custom-designed base and landscaped environment for the bronze sculpture (39.65.53). White plotted out his sketch for the statue’s setting with a straight edge, delineating an outer pathway as well as one that crosses with a bench that crosses in front of the sculpture. The drawing is otherwise rendered in quick strokes and shadings to indicate trees, hedges, and a fountain with central sphere. Areas of water, grass, leaves, and sky are colored with pastels. The final result featured the same major elements, with the addition of brick pathways that led the viewer around the fountain and to the sculpture. (The monument, with only the red granite base, was relocated in 1899 to Springfield’s Merrick Park).

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sketch of Saint Gaudens's Statue of Deacon Samuel Chapin, Springfield, MassachusettsSketch of Saint Gaudens's Statue of Deacon Samuel Chapin, Springfield, MassachusettsSketch of Saint Gaudens's Statue of Deacon Samuel Chapin, Springfield, MassachusettsSketch of Saint Gaudens's Statue of Deacon Samuel Chapin, Springfield, MassachusettsSketch of Saint Gaudens's Statue of Deacon Samuel Chapin, Springfield, Massachusetts

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.