Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Flanagan was one of Saint-Gaudens’s most talented assistants, working in his studio between 1885 and 1890 before training in Paris and establishing his own successful career. Flanagan began modeling this bust in 1905 in New York and Cornish, New Hampshire, leaving it incomplete until 1920 when he received a commission from New York University for a portrait of the sculptor (1848-1907). Saint-Gaudens’s diminished physical appearance from intestinal cancer is masked in this robust likeness. Exuding creative intensity, he looks just as painter Kenyon Cox reminisced after his death in 1907: "That extraordinary head, with its heavy brow, beetling above the small but piercing eyes, its crisp and wiry hair, its projecting jaw and great, strongly modelled [sic] nose…alive with power."
Artwork Details
- Title: Augustus Saint-Gaudens
- Artist: John Flanagan (American, Newark, New Jersey 1865–1952 New York)
- Founder: Cast by Kunst Foundry (American, New York, ca. 1914–43)
- Date: 1905–24, cast 1924
- Culture: American
- Medium: Bronze
- Dimensions: 16 1/2 x 8 x 10 in., 57lb. (41.9 x 20.3 x 25.4 cm)
- Credit Line: Francis Lathrop Fund, 1933
- Object Number: 33.62
- Curatorial Department: The American Wing
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John Flanagan
1917
Kenyon Cox
1887, replica 1908
Ellen Emmet Rand
1905
James Earle Fraser
1901
James Earle Fraser
1901
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