Frederick William MacMonnies was acclaimed by the turn of the nineteenth century as the finest expatriate American of the beaux-arts movement.  He studied under Augustus Saint-Gaudens, meeting Stanford White in the former’s studio and rising quickly to fame with a number of public commissions, including the arch in Washington Square, New York, and the centerpiece of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.  He departed for Paris in 1884, where he won the highest honors available to Americans.