Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Rand studied at the Art Students League in New York with painters Kenyon Cox and William Merritt Chase. She established a studio in New York in 1900 and painted numerous portraits of artists, writers, and statesmen. Her sedate half-length portrait of the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, rendered in a monochromatic palette of dark brown hues, depicts the aging sculptor in profile. Based on sittings from life, he is seated in a contemplative pose, holding his glasses in his left hand and gripping the arm of his chair. The portrait was regarded as such an accurate likeness by Saint-Gaudens and his friends and family that in 1906 architect Charles McKim initiated a campaign to acquire it for the Metropolitan. It was included in Saint-Gaudens’s memorial exhibition held at the Metropolitan in spring 1908, and purchased for the collection soon thereafter.