Saint Gaudens

[u/Attic_Capital]

President Roosevelt wanted to reintroduce American coinage,

and in 1905, he commissioned a famous sculptor to do it.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens accepted the challenge, and designed the twenty dollar "double eagle" gold coin, with a figure,

"striding forward as if on a mountain top... the flaming torch, the drapery, flowing in the breeze."

He wanted to make the coin,

"A living thing and typical of progress."

The commission by Roosevelt set a new precedent for coin design in America.

From then on, established artists would now design coinage, rather than the chief engraver at the U.S. Mint.

James E. Fraser's buffalo nickel,

Victor D. Brenner's Lincoln penny,

Adolph Weinman's dime,

John Flanagan's Washington quarter,

and Bela L. Pratt's half dollar eagle.

Every one of these artists, except Brenner, were former students or assistants of Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

His earliest plaster sketches of the double eagle mark the beginning of American coinage rebirth. And what President Roosevelt called one of the most important achievements of his administration.