Frances Folsom Cleveland
Saint-Gaudens began modelling a low-relief portrait of Frances Folsom Cleveland (1864-1947), wife of President Grover Cleveland, while both were guests at the summer home of Helena and Richard Gilder in Marion, Massachusetts, in August 1887, completing the seventeen-inch medallion in 1892. It depicts Frances Cleveland one year after her marriage to the President, at age twenty-three, wearing an upswept hairstyle and a fashionable, high-collared dress. In late 1901, Saint-Gaudens reduced the scale of the plaster medallion to five-and-a-half inches in diameter, and early in 1902 he cast it in bronze and presented this example to Richard Gilder as a birthday present.
Artwork Details
- Title: Frances Folsom Cleveland
- Artist: Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, Dublin 1848–1907 Cornish, New Hampshire)
- Date: 1887–92, cast 1902
- Medium: Bronze
- Dimensions: Diameter: 5 1/2 in. (14 cm)
- Credit Line: Friends of the American Wing Fund, 2008
- Object Number: 2008.156
- Curatorial Department: The American Wing
More Artwork
Research Resources
The Met provides unparalleled resources for research and welcomes an international community of students and scholars. The Met's Open Access API is where creators and researchers can connect to the The Met collection. Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.
To request images under copyright and other restrictions, please use this Image Request form.
Feedback
We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments.