Louise Adele Gould

After Saint-Gaudens completed the high-relief portrait of Louise Gould (1856-1883) (15.105.1), her widower Charles Gould asked the sculptor to adapt the portrait to three dimensions. In this smooth bust-length rendering with a socle base, she is chastely dressed in a classicizing drape with knots at the shoulders. Gould expressed his pleasure at Saint-Gaudens’s ability to capture his wife’s "girlish simplicity and sweetness." This and the other two portraits of Louise Gould (15.105.1; 32.62.1) were translated to marble by the Piccirilli Brothers, the carvers of choice for such American leading sculptors as Saint-Gaudens, John Quincy Adams Ward, and Daniel Chester French.