题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:容易
河北省武邑中学2019届高三上学期英语期末考试试卷(含小段音频)
Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his family immigrated to New York, America, from Dublin, Ireland, in 1848 when he was just six months old. As he grew up, Augustus liked racing his friends around the block, buying candies at the store, especially drawing—drawing pictures of the shoemakers at his father's shoe shop. At the age of 13, his father told him it was time to go to work. Augustus replied, "I should like it if I could do something which would help me to be an artist." He began as an apprentice to a cameo cutter out of stone and shell, and carved cameos of people, lions, and even the head of Hercules from Greek mythology, when the Civil War had just begun.
At 19, with his earnings and his parents' support, he travelled to Paris and Rome for further training and artistic study. Before he left, he drew a portrait of his mother in pencil and sculpted a small bust(半身像) of his father out of clay. Then, 22-year-old Augustus opened an art studio in Rome and worked on his first life-sized sculpture, called Hiawatha. An art patron was impressed with this sculpture and promised to help Augustus "until your genius and labors shall have met with the reward to which I feel they are entitled".
In 1876, Augustus was chosen to design a monument to the Civil War hero Admiral David Farragut of the U. S. Navy. Completed five years later, when he was 33, his first major sculpture for the U. S. was unveiled at Madison Square in New York City, the sculptor's boyhood home. One art critic called it "the best monument of the kind the city has to show". Then the giant Standing Lincoln in Lincoln Park, Chicago in a setting by architect White, 1884-1887, was considered the finest portrait statue in the U. S.
However, in 1900, aged 52, his doctors told him he had cancer. Even though he was often ill, he continued to work at his home and studio in Cornish, New Hampshire.
In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt requested that Augustus redesign American coins—to convey the strength of the nation. Augustus made lifelike pencil sketches of his coin designs. Yet, Augustus died in August 1907, two months before his l0-dollar and 20-dollar gold coins were issued. Augustus Saint-Gaudens had fulfilled his dream-and more! He was one of the greatest American sculptors not only of his day but also of all time.
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