TitleRobert Louis Stevenson
Artist
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
(American, 1848 - 1907)
Date1887-1900
MediumBronze relief
DimensionsOverall: 25 3/8 × 25 3/8 × 1 3/8 in.
Other (Relief): 18 1/2 × 1/2 in.
Other (Mount board): 25 3/8 × 25 3/8 × 3/4 in.
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, Gift of the Helen and Thomas Hastings Fund, Inc., 1958
Object number149-S
Label TextSaint-Gaudens modeled the features of the famous Scottish novelist and poet at the Hotel Albert on Eleventh Street, New York, in 1887. The poem quoted within the work is from Underwoods, a collection of Stevenson's verse, and was dedicated by the author to the artist Will Low, who arranged for Saint-Gaudens to take Stevenson's portrait.This relief was originally conceived in a rectangular format, but the tondo form was eventually adopted and the earliest known cast of the work, dating from 1890 and now at Princeton, was made in that shape. Nevertheless, when a monumental version was cast in 1900 for St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, it was in the rectangular form. The conception went through many changes and variations over the years. Its evolution and the many casts made of it in several versions are detailed by Dryfhout.
The personalized inscription incorporated into a casting--in the case of the Academy's example to Helen Hastings--was a typical of the series, many versions of which were cast specifically for friends of the sculptor. Saint-Gaudens showed an early version of the medallion in the Academy annual of 1889; another varient, inscribed to Stevenson, himself, was lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, to the Academy for its 1939 Special Exhibition.
Collections
- 19th Century Highlights from the Collection
