Commemorative coins and 10 and 20-dollar coins
Saint-Gaudens' interest in numismatic art went back to his apprenticeship days as a cameo cutter in the early 1860s. However, it was not until 1889 that he received his first commission for an official commemorative medallion to mark the centenary of the nomination of George Washington. Several other medallions were to follow. In 1893, for the Colombian Exposition of Chicago, in 1896, for the commemoration of the Quadra-centenary of the discovery of America, and finally, in 1905 for the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt.
In 1904, the president Theodore Roosevelt communicated his disappointment to the Ministry of Finance concerning American coinage that he considered not very aesthetic. He suggested that Augustus Saint-Gaudens should bring it up to date. In January 1905, already weakened by cancer, Saint-Gaudens received the official commission for 10-dollar coins, 20-dollar coins and the new cent piece. It was the first time that such a task had been confided to an artist who was not in the Mint administration. As from November, Saint-Gaudens started work on the sketches and made over seventy models. In January 1906, the sculptor informed the Ministry of Finance that for the double eagle, or the 20-dollar coin, he was working on a high-relief model and that he wished to evoke the high reliefs of Greek antiquity. But such a technique would have given the coin strikers at the Mint a problem and finally Saint-Gaudens had to reduce the relief on the coins. They were finally edited a few months after the sculptor's death in 1907. They were issued until 1933. Still considered as the most beautiful of the American coins, they gave a new lease of life to numismatic art in this country.
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