Art Institute of Chicago

Violet Sargent

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

Date

Modeled 1890, cast c. 1908

Medium

Bronze

Culture

New Hampshire

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Portrayed here is Violet Sargent, the sister of the painter John Singer Sargent. Augustus Saint-Gaudens produced this bronze relief in exchange for a portrait of his wife and son by Sargent. Clothed in contemporary dress and playing a guitar, Violet projects charm, elegance, and sophistication—similar to a sitter in a Sargent portrait in oil. Musical instruments were often included in late 19th-century depictions of young upper-class women as a way of suggesting the leisure and refinement these women were expected to embody. The varying degrees of relief and the harmonious lines of this work attest to Saint-Gaudens’s technical prowess and his sensitivity to the medium of bronze.

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