Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Don't let the grand statues fool you; Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the Gilded Age's master sculptor, was a whirlwind of creative chaos. Born in Dublin to a French shoemaker and an Irish mother, he began his career at 13 as a cameo-cutter in New York. He later decamped to Paris and Rome for a classical upgrade. An artist of "terrific" energy, he was known to storm into his assistants' workspaces, shove them off their stools, and fire off a dozen sketches in a five-minute frenzy. Rumor has it that the face of his famous "Diana" statue, which once graced Madison Square Garden, belonged to his mistress, Davida Clark. It's also whispered that he once engineered an unlikely meeting between the frail author Robert Louis Stevenson and the formidable General William Tecumseh Sherman, two of his subjects, leading to an animated discussion of battle tactics. From solemn monuments to the nation's most beautiful coin, Saint-Gaudens left his mark with a dramatic flair that was anything but retiring.