Bessie Springs Smith White (Mrs. Stanford White)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens American

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 764

Saint-Gaudens completed this portrait of Bessie Springs Smith (1862-1950) at the time of her marriage to the architect Stanford White in 1884. Modeling the portrait was the sculptor’s gift to the couple, and he later funded its translation into marble to settle a debt with White. Smith White appears in her bridal ensemble, holding rose blooms symbolizing love and beauty. By the mid-1880s, Saint-Gaudens’s style of relief sculpture was more ambitious, incorporating lower and higher passages, ranging from the sketchy veil to the deeply undercut chin. The tabernacle frame with a scrollwork-and-floral pattern was designed by White.

Bessie Springs Smith White (Mrs. Stanford White), Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, Dublin 1848–1907 Cornish, New Hampshire), Marble, American

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Bessie Springs Smith White (Mrs. Stanford White), Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, Dublin 1848–1907 Cornish, New Hampshire), Marble, American
Bessie Springs Smith White (Mrs. Stanford White), Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, Dublin 1848–1907 Cornish, New Hampshire), Marble, American

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