Art Institute of Chicago

Bust from the Adams Memorial

Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, born Ireland, 1848–1907)

Date

Modeled 1892–93, cast 1912

Medium

Bronze

Culture

United States

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

This bust comes from the upper portion of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s 1886–91 full-figure tomb monument for Marian Hooper Adams, the wife of historian and philosopher Henry Adams, in Washington’s Rock Creek Cemetery. Because Marian’s death was a suicide and the couple was fascinated by Asian cultures, Henry asked Saint-Gaudens to avoid Christian symbolism and instead evoke the “contemplative compassion derived from Buddhist philosophy.” When Chicago architect Daniel Burnham visited Saint-Gaudens in 1892, he saw a plaster cast of the figure’s head and was enthralled by its mysterious yet meditative quality. In 1893, perhaps in celebration of Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition, Saint-Gaudens gave the bust to Burnham, who later had four bronzes cast from it.

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