Jules Bastien-Lepage

About this artwork

Augustus Saint-Gaudens modeled a series of low-relief portraits of his artist friends in Paris, including this depiction of painter Jules Bastien-Lepage. The sculptor playfully featured a palette and brushes yet concealed most of the sitter’s hands—which are so important to an artist’s act of making. This shallow relief sculpture was made by the newly developed process of electrotyping. Electrically charged metals and metal alloys (here copper and bronze) adhered to a mold of the original clay s...

Art Historical Context

This finely modeled portrait relief by Augustus SaintGaudens depicts the French painter Jules Bastien-epage. Created in 1880 and cast the next year, it showcases the American sculptor’s exceptional skill in low-relief work, a format he helped elevate during the late nineteenth century. Saint-Gaudens, a central figure of the American Renaissance and Beaux-Arts tradition, blended classical composure with keen observation of individual character. His time studying in Paris placed him among leading European artists, and this intimate plaque reflects those transatlantic exchanges. The medium—copper given a bronze patina—lends the surface a warm, luminous quality that enhances the subtle modeling of the sitter’s features and clothing. At just over fourteen by ten inches, the work rewards close looking, revealing Saint-Gaudens’ ability to suggest personality and atmosphere through shallow planes and delicate incisions. Bastien-Lepage himself was celebrated for naturalistic, empathetic portrayals of everyday life; the sculptor’s tribute captures a fellow artist at the height of his brief career. Now in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Arts of the Americas collection, the relief stands as both a personal homage and a demonstration of how American sculpture engaged with contemporary European naturalism while asserting its own refined technical and expressive standards.

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...