John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925). Portrait of a Boy, 1890. Oil on canvas; 59 13/16 x 55 7/8 in. (152 x 142 cm). Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Patrons Art Fund, 32.1
Who is the fidgety boy who commands our gaze midway through Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends? He's Homer Saint-Gaudens (1880–1958), ten-year-old son of the eminent American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907). Titled Portrait of a Boy (Homer Saint-Gaudens and his Mother), the canvas is ostensibly a likeness of Homer, with his mother, Augusta (1848–1926), relegated to the shadowy background.
Dressed in his finest "Little Lord Fauntleroy" attire, Homer slumps impatiently, his legs inelegantly spanning the corner of his chair. Apparently he was so restless during the sittings that his mother distracted him by repeatedly reading a story of the naval battle between the Constitution and the Guerrière during the War of 1812. Homer recollected he "had no respect whatsoever and scant liking for John Singer Sargent, who squelched the small boy's obstreperousness every few minutes by just plain sitting on him" (Saint-Gaudens 1941, 140).
Regardless of young Homer's adverse opinion of Sargent, his father deeply admired the painter. Augustus Saint-Gaudens's esteem for Sargent is captured in an 1899 letter that he wrote to his niece Rose Nichols: "He is a big fellow and, what is, I'm inclined to think, a great deal more, a good fellow" (Augustus Saint-Gaudens Papers). Both men had a gift for friendship and shared many mutual friends and sitters including William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924), Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894), and Ellen Terry (1847–1928), all of whom are represented by portraits in the Met's Sargent exhibition.
Left: John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925). Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887. Oil on canvas; 20 1/16 x 24 5/16 in. (51 x 61.8 cm). Bequest of Charles Phelps and Anna Sinton Taft, Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio. Right: Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, 1848–1907). Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887–88; cast 1910. Bronze; 35 1/4 in., 116 lb. (89.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift by subscription through the Saint-Gaudens Memorial Committee, 1912 (12.76.1)
Sargent and Saint-Gaudens's own bond spanned decades, covering ground from Paris and London to New York and Boston. The two artists met in Paris in late 1877 or early 1878 while occupying nearby studios on the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. The two men regularly attended social gatherings at Frank Millet's Montmartre studio, a locus for American artists living in Paris who assembled as the cryptically named Stomach Club.
Left: Sargent, 1874. © Private collection. Right: Saint-Gaudens in Paris, 1878, U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, N.H.
Sargent and Saint-Gaudens maintained their friendship over three decades as they both rose to the top of their careers and spent time on both sides of the Atlantic. On several occasions, they exchanged works of art as friendship tokens. First, they traded a cast of Saint-Gaudens's low-relief portrait of the French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage for Sargent's watercolor of a female figure from a visit to Capri in 1878. The location of Sargent's Bastien-Lepage cast is unknown, while the watercolor burned in a disastrous fire in Saint-Gaudens's Cornish, New Hampshire, studio in 1904, as did most of Sargent's letters to the sculptor.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, 1848–1907). Jules Bastien-Lepage, 1880, cast 1910. Bronze; 14 3/4 x 10 1/2 in. (37.5 x 26.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift by subscription through the Saint-Gaudens Memorial Committee, 1912 (12.76.4)
About the time these gifts were swapped, Saint-Gaudens also completed a medal of Sargent. Just two and a half inches in diameter, this portrait was the sculptor's first foray into medallic work.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, 1848–1907). John Singer Sargent, 1880. Bronze; Diam. 2 1/2 in. (6.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Mrs. Edward Robinson, 1913 (13.78)
In his Reminiscences, Saint-Gaudens described Sargent as "a tall, rather slim, handsome fellow" (Saint-Gaudens 1913, 250). Here he is posed in neck-length profile, facing right, with a tidy beard and a tousled tuft of hair. Almost as commanding as the sketchy likeness is the bold inscription in roughly-rendered letters: "MY • FRIEND • IOHN / SARGENT • PARIS • / IVLY M • D • C • CCLXXX; BRVTTO RITRATO." The exact implication of the words "BRVTTO RITRATO" has been cause for speculation. Literally translated, they mean "crude portrait," and on the simplest level Saint-Gaudens may have been apologizing in a tangible manner for its hasty execution. Likewise, Sargent's ruffled appearance was at odds with his suave and polished portraits. Some fifteen examples of this witty medal exist; Sargent gave his cast to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York in 1923.
In 1890, when Sargent was on an extended visit to the United States, the two artists again exchanged artwork, this time on a more ambitious scale. It was then that Sargent completed his painting of Homer and Augusta Saint-Gaudens, with seven sittings taking place in his temporary studio at Madison Avenue and 23rd Street in New York. In return, Saint-Gaudens executed a bas-relief of Sargent's younger sister Violet, with Sargent ordering bronze and marble replicas.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, 1848–1907). Violet Sargent, 1890. Bronze; 50 x 34 in. (126.9 x 86.4 cm). Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Rose Pitman Hughes (1970.39)
Saint-Gaudens first met Violet Sargent in February 1890 at William Merritt Chase's New York studio during a performance of the legendary Spanish dancer Carmencita. Said to be captivated by Violet's profile, Saint-Gaudens arranged to model her likeness. The genial, honest nature of their friendship is suggested in a letter that Sargent wrote Saint-Gaudens as to the most winning pose for his sister:
I have a sort of feeling that, given my sister's head, I should rather have a rond-bon [high relief]—even ever so slight, than a bas [low]- relief…. However you know best and I am sure you will do something charming in any case and I will admire it tremendously…. At any rate pardon my silly interference. I am surprised at myself for behaving just like the worst bourgeois." (Augustus Saint-Gaudens Papers)
In the end, Saint-Gaudens ignored Sargent's "bourgeois" recommendations and completed a full-length low-relief portrait in which Violet is seated. The composition is one of the sculptor's most informal and narrative; here the sitter does not just pose, but engages in activity by tuning a guitar. Perhaps Saint-Gaudens was attempting to emulate the spirit of Sargent's fluidly painted casual portraits.
During their many years of friendship, Sargent and Saint-Gaudens also offered each other advice and encouragement on commissions, especially when Sargent embarked on the production of sculpture. When Saint-Gaudens moved to Paris in 1897, he was consulted on the enlargement and patination of Sargent's relief decorations for the ambitious mural cycle on the development of Western religious thought (1890–1916) for the Boston Public Library. He reported to Rose Nichols in 1899 that Sargent had visited him in Paris: "He came to see me about the enlargement of his crucifixion for the Boston Library. It is in sculpture…. He has done a masterpiece" (Augustus Saint-Gaudens Papers).
John Singer Sargent (American, 1848–1907). Dogma of the Redemption: Trinity; Crucifix and Frieze of Angels, installed 1903. Boston Public Library
Saint-Gaudens even dispatched his trusted caster Gaeton Ardisson to London to assist Sargent with a nine-foot crucifixion in gilded and painted plaster for the library's Dogma of the Redemption mural. Sargent also relied on Saint-Gaudens to oversee the casting of several reduced bronze casts in Paris, one of which he requested that the sculptor keep for himself as a token of gratitude.
John Singer Sargent (American, 1848–1907). Crucifix, 1898–99. Bronze; 29 1/2 x 20 1/4 x 2 1/4 in. (74.9 x 51.4 x 5.7 cm). U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, N.H., Gift of Mrs. Homer Saint-Gaudens (1969.1648)
Saint-Gaudens died in 1907 in Cornish, New Hampshire, where in 1919 Augusta and Homer Saint-Gaudens established a museum known as the Saint-Gaudens Memorial. In 1964, the Memorial transferred the property and contents to the National Park Service; it is now operated as the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. Among the earliest Memorial trustees was Sargent: he was on the board from 1922 until his death three years later, for a time holding the position of first vice president. Thus Sargent's final tribute to Saint-Gaudens was a posthumous, but tangible, act of friendship.
And what became of Homer Saint-Gaudens and his painting? After working in journalism and theater, Homer served as director of the Department of Fine Arts of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh from 1922 to 1950 (now the Carnegie Museum of Art). Sargent's painting hung in the dining room in Aspet, the Saint-Gaudens family home in Cornish, until 1907; Homer Saint-Gaudens sold it to the Carnegie in 1932 after it had been on loan there for many years.
Sources
Augustus Saint-Gaudens Papers, Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.
Saint-Gaudens, Homer. The American Artist and His Times. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1941.
Saint-Gaudens, Homer, ed. The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Vol. 1. New York: The Century Co., 1913.