Louise Adele Dickerson Gould
Augustus Saint-Gaudens American
Herbert Adams American
Not on view
Between 1893 and 1904, Charles Gould commissioned Saint-Gaudens to complete three portraits of his deceased wife, Louise Adele Dickerson Gould (1856-1883), who died suddenly at age twenty-six. Marble versions of these variants are in The Met collection. Despite his praise that the second portrait captured his late beloved’s “girlish simplicity and sweetness,” Gould asked Saint-Gaudens to remake the bust in colored wax, in essence to bring her closer to life. Subtly painted by Herbert Adams, who specialized in polychrome sculpture, the portrait evokes the living aura of its subject, both immediate and vulnerable, present and haunting. The myth of Pygmalion, in which the love of a man brought stone to life, is vividly evoked in these busts.
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