Stan and Gus: Art, Ardor, and the Friendship That Built the Gilded Age
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 — the beginning of 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.
Kirkus Reviews
Collaborators, libertines, visionaries.
Wiencek dexterously chronicles the fruitful 30-year friendship of architect Stanford White and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who designed grand buildings and public art and ignored sexual taboos, leading to lurid tragedy. . . . A brisk, absorbing portrait of troubled artistic allies whose work embodied an era.
Financial Times, July 17, 2025
“Stan and Gus — art, scandal and the making of the Gilded Age”
By John Sedgwick
Henry Wiencek’s zesty history recounts the extraordinary partnership between architect Stanford White and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens
It was Mark Twain who called America’s first plutocracy, the one with the industrial tycoons of the late 19th century, the Gilded Age. And now that we’re in the thick of the second one, with the tech bros . . . it may be a good time to look back and see that, once again, gilded is not golden.
There was a lot going on with Stan and Gus, individually and jointly. Although each was married, both had plenty of sexual liaisons with beauties of both sexes, some of it in the aptly named Sewer Club; and they were sufficiently attached that Gus signed a letter to Stan with phalluses. But they were an even more unusual combo as sculptor-architect collaborators.
Publishers Weekly, July 2025
An intimate account of the professional and personal relationship between architect Stanford White (1853-1906) and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907). The two met in 1875 New York, forming a creative partnership in which White solicited commissions for Saint-Gaudens—who was seemingly always on the verge of financial ruin—and designed the bases for many of Saint-Gaudens’s sculptures. Drawing on archival sources, Wiencek highlights how the pair embraced Gilded Age New York’s “theatrical potential as a place of visual and social drama” in their projects, rejecting Gothic styles for designs with drama and “emotional power,” such as their opulent Madison Square Garden, which included a statue of the Goddess Diana, and Saint-Gaudens’s relief sculpture commemorating the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, an all-Black unit that fought in the Civil War. Situating his subjects’ story against the hedonism of the Gilded Age, Wiencek devotes ample space to their numerous affairs with women, men, and one another; the scandals that consumed White’s life; and the complex dynamic between the pair——White was charismatic and confident, Saint-Gaudens was wracked by self-doubt. . . . a colorful, captivating window into a fascinating historical era.
Booklist, July 2025
The intertwined biographies of two Gilded Age artists reveal a complex relationship in electrifying, turbulent times. Known for his Civil War statues and the sleek, gleaming Diana of the Tower, Augustus “Gus” Saint-Gaudens was one of the era’s most prominent sculptors. Stanford “Stan” White, architect of Greenwich Village’s iconic Washington Arch, designed Fifth Avenue mansions and Long Island getaways for the Gatsby set. The men were very much opposites. Stan was dashing and sociable, a “sensation seeker” driven by powerful appetites. Gus, by contrast, was intense and ascetic, moody and tormented. Following a theatrical initial meeting, they “came together like two sticking plasters.” Though both would marry others, Stan and Gus would remain intimate for 30 years, until Stan was murdered by a Pittsburgh millionaire whose wife he had allegedly raped when she was a teenager. Highlighting his subjects’ larger-than-life personalities, the imbalances of their relationship, and the glittery, careening mess of their era, Wiencek (Master of the Mountain, 2013) ultimately celebrates the artistic impact Stan and Gus’ relationship would have upon New York City.
— Brendan Driscoll
Town and Country
We all know there’s a seedy underbelly to high society, and this new biography of legendary architect Stanford White and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens delves into the secrets, lies, and blinding ambition that made that especially true of the Gilded Age. Henry Wiencek’s story about how the two men formed a friendship that helped define their era is not only one about a powerful partnership, but also the way two creative titans helped shape a changing country—and changed each other in the process.
portrait by Jill Meriwether Photo
About
Henry
The author of numerous books, Henry Wiencek won the National Book Critics' Circle Award in Biography for The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White. His book about George Washington and slavery, An Imperfect God, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History and the Best Book Award from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves, was chosen by Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post as one of the best books of 2012. He has been awarded fellowships at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the International Center for Jefferson Studies, and the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College, where he was the inaugural Patrick Henry Writing Fellow. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife, the writer Donna Lucey.