Arts & Culture
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August Saint-Gaudens's William Tecumseh Sherman monument, created with a granite base designed by architect Charles McKim and a horse sculpted by Alexander Phimister Proctor, was the artist's last major monument and his crowning achievement. It portrays the Civil War general on horseback, led forward by a winged female figure personifying Victory, and celebrates Sherman's victorious southern campaigns. Sherman appears stoic and pensive as he pulls on the reins while the horse's back hoof steps on pine cones and boughs, evoking the southern landscape. Victory holds a palm frond and wears a crown of laurels, traditional symbols associated with her. Made of bronze and covered in gold leaf, the work used an unusual treatment for outdoor sculpture because Saint-Gaudens disliked the dark patina that bronze developed and intended the gold, with a pigment to accentuate details, to keep the monument luminous over time. It was conserved and re-gilded in 2014 as part of the Central Park Conservancy's project to reconstruct Grand Army Plaza.
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