Stan and Gus

Art, Ardor, and the Friendship That Built the Gilded Age

By: Henry Wiencek

Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray

How the architect Stanford White and the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens transcended scandal to enrich their times.

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. They pursued their own careers in Italy and France, then came together again in New York, where they maintained 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.

©2025 Henry Wiencek (P)2025 Dreamscape Media

Very entertaining, poorly researched

Very entertaining but a poorly researched book using outdated sources that rely on inaccurate information and distortions. A fascinating period in New York history, and no doubt that despite his prodigious talents as an architect, Stanford White was a relentless predator of young girls, a Jeffrey Epstein type. This is a very salacious story with many truths intertwined with art historical errors. The author has depended upon numerous sources, now more than fifty years old, and that have since been discredited, concerning the artist John Singer Sargent and his contemporaries. This is such a fascinating topic, but It would have been a far better book had the author consulted the more recent and vast new scholarship containing updated documentation about the gifted American sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens and about White as well. Essentially well narrated with some poor pronunciation of foreign words.

Artistic Aspirations of the Gilded Age

Lifelong friends and cocreators, architect Stanford White, and sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, rose to prominence on the wealth and artistic ambitions of America's late-nineteenth century newly-minted plutocrats. The author gives focus to what could have been an overly broad historical tome by focusing on the intertwined livess of these two immensely talented and deeply flawed men.

Wild 'n crazy times

I thought I knew a lot about StGaudens from visiting his home in Cornish. Heck, all the good stuff is never mentioned there!
Fascinating book about an incredible time in American history. Highly recommend it!

ok, not great, didn't learn much

I thought this was going to have better stories. I learned some things about the men, but not anything I didn't know already. It could have been a bit more colorful with regard to their personal relationship.