Homer Schiff Saint-Gaudens

Art Historical Context

Augustus Saint-Gaudens one of America’s foremost sculptors of the late nineteenth century, created sensitive marble portrait of Homer Schiff Saint-Gaudens. Modeled in 1882 when the subject was a young child and carved in marble more than two decades later, the work captures the boy in profile, a format Saint-Gaudens frequently employed for intimate relief portraits. The sculpture entered the Metropolitan Museum’s collection as a gift from Jacob H. Schiff in 1905, underscoring the close ties between the artist’s family and prominent American patrons. Saint-Gaudens worked within the Beaux-Arts tradition, blending classical idealism with naturalistic detail. Here the crisp carving of the marble conveys both the softness of childhood features and the crisp contours of a profile silhouette, demonstrating his remarkable ability to suggest volume and personality within a shallow plane. The later carving date suggests the piece may have been realized from an earlier plaster model, reflecting the sculptor’s practice of revisiting favored compositions. As a tender family portrait executed in a durable, luminous medium, the relief embodies the period’s renewed interest in commemorating private life through the language of monumental sculpture. Its presence in the American Wing highlights Saint-Gaudens’s lasting influence on the development of a distinctly American sculptural voice.

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...