Bust from the Adams Memorial
Modeled 1892–93, cast 1912
Medium
Bronze
Dimensions
51.4 × 30.5 × 26.7 (20 1/4 × 12 × 10 1/2 in.)
Classification
bust/head
Department
Arts of the Americas
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
191184
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This bust comes from the upper portion of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s 1886–91 full-figure tomb monument for Marian Hooper Adams, the wife of historian and philosopher Henry Adams, in Washington’s Rock Creek Cemetery. Because Marian’s death was a suicide and the couple was fascinated by Asian cultures, Henry asked Saint-Gaudens to avoid Christian symbolism and instead evoke the “contemplative compassion derived from Buddhist philosophy.” When Chicago architect Daniel Burnham visited Saint-Gaudens in...
About the Artist
Augustus Saint-Gaudens · 1848–1907
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907) was an Irish-born American sculptor widely regarded as the greatest American sculptor of the nineteenth century. Born in Dublin to a French father and Irish mother, he was brought to New York City as an infant. He trained as a cameo cutter, studied at the Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design, and then traveled to Paris, where he studied at the École de...