Stanford White : Letters to His Family : Including a Selection of Letters to Augustus Saint-Gaudens - Hardcover

White, Claire Nicolas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 084782022X ISBN 13: 9780847820221

Publisher: Rizzoli, 1997

Synopsis

These letters and sketches by Stanford White were left by Lawrence Grant White, when he died in 1956. He had mounted them in beautiful leather-bound books, each impetuously scribbled letter accompanied by a typewritten transcription. It was so obviously the labor of love and admiration of a son for his father that this alone made them precious.

About this title

Review

Reproduced here for the first time, the intimate letters written by Stanford White (1853-1906) reveal much more about the private man than about his public persona as a fashionable Gilded Age architect and socialite. This captivating collection of candid letters, assembled and preserved by the architect's son, span nearly 50 years, from White's childhood to shortly before his untimely death (he was murdered in 1906). Many of the letters appear in facsimile reproduction and include architectural sketches and other drawings from White's travels in the United States, Mexico, and Europe. This volume, which also reproduces photographs and watercolors, adds valuable insight into the life of one of the most prominent architects in late 19th-century America. Of particular interest are the letters penned to the two people White was closest to--his mother and his wife--drawing an engaging, funny, and charming self-portrait. Writing from Paris in 1878, and reproaching himself for not having written sooner, he begins a letter to his mother with, "I ought to have my head punched and be sat on generally."

Review

"These letters and sketches convey vividly the exhilaration of a young American architect coming to happy terms with his discovery of the beautiful edifices of an old Europe and the infinite potentialities of his own art to emulate them. White's appetite for living seemed never to be satiated; there seemed little borderline between his pleasures and his work, whether he was fishing, hunting, partying in Gotham, hiking over Mexican deserts infested with hostile Indians, or sketching, designing, projecting vast buildings and parks. Art was life."--Louis Auchincloss

Edition details

• Publisher: Rizzoli
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 084782022X
• ISBN 13: 9780847820221
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160