{"product_id":"stan-and-gus","title":"Stan and Gus","description":"The celebrated architect Stanford White was a louche man-about-town and a canny cultural entrepreneur, the creator of landmarks that raised the stature of the American built environment. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, a sculptor and the son of an immigrant shoemaker, was a moody introvert and a committed procrastinator whose painstaking work brought emotional depth to American statuary. Over years of acquaintance, their relationship evolved into a partnership that defined the art of the Gilded Age. In Stan and Gus, the acclaimed historian Henry Wiencek tells the story of a fruitful, complicated relationship. After pursuing their own careers in Italy and France, the two men met again back home, where they forged era-defining monuments, including White’s Washington Square Arch and Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan and Saint-Gaudens’s memorials to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and Clover Adams in Boston and Washington, D.C., respectively. Over the course of decades, White protected Saint-Gaudens from impatient clients when he failed to complete projects on time. Meanwhile, Saint-Gaudens challenged White to take his artistic gifts seriously. But alongside the brilliant commissions were sordid debaucheries—and White’s sensational murder in 1906. Throughout, Wiencek sets White and Saint-Gaudens within the era known as the American Renaissance, when a new upper class sought to fortify its ascendancy, and its aspirations and delusions of grandeur collided with new aesthetic ideas to yield work of lasting beauty.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57503601033589,"sku":"9781250437914","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781250437914.jpg?v=1786867310","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/stan-and-gus","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}