It was in the year 1877 that Saint-Gaudens took a principal part in the founding of the Society of American Artists. The establishment of this society was an important milestone in the progress of American art, for with it came a vital change in American painting and sculpture. Previously, art in the United States had been more or less burdened with conventions and a dull technique. But this stagnant state now became stirred and freshened by the flood of a new generation of artists. Such men as Saint-Gaudens, Eastman Johnson, John LaFarge, Winslow Homer, and John S. Sargent began to remonstrate against the things that were. These men and their fellows had felt abroad the new movement in artistic appreciation. It was their desire to give to America this new and virile expression, and in spite of the opposition of the conservatists of the established school,—the “old-timers,”—the new society received a welcome and became a constantly increasing factor and force in the development of American art. A year was now spent in the modeling of a high bas-relief depicting the “Adoration of the Cross by Angels,” which was to form the principal part of the interior decorations of St. Thomas’s Church in New York, which were being designed by Mr. John LaFarge. This was important work and added greatly to Saint-Gaudens’s reputation; but only the memory of its beauty remains, for the church was later destroyed by fire. In 1878 Saint-Gaudens again visited Paris, but this time his work and study held him there for three years. In a quiet studio which he hired in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs, work was begun on the Farragut statue, and also on a series of figures which were designed to ornament a mausoleum which Governor Morgan of Connecticut had commissioned him to execute. It is a strange coincidence that the angels for the Morgan tomb were later destroyed by fire, as were the angels of St. Thomas’s Church. “In the years I passed this time in Paris there was little of the adventurous swing of life that pervaded my previous struggles.” Work on his commissions almost wholly occupied him. There were, however, occasional excursions, and the presence of two friends, Stanford White and McKim, who were already winning their reputation as brilliant New York architects, did much to break the tedium of his work.