Art Institute of Chicago
Violet Sargent
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, born Ireland, 1848–1907)LinkedCulture matchlcp-e0512b752dbb
- Date
- Modeled 1890, cast c. 1908
- Medium
- Bronze
- Culture
- New Hampshire
- Department
- Arts of the Americas
- Institution
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Object ID
- 93510
From the Art Institute of Chicago record
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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Provenance & credit
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- Credit line
- Gift of Brooks McCormick
- Provenance
- Charles Deering (1852–1927), Chicago and Miami, FL, 1909 [“V. Sargent ready for delivery” dated Sept. 14, 1909, on list of works purchased by Charles Deering, Augustus Saint-Gaudens Papers, box 5, folder 25, Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH]; by descent to his daughters Marion McCormick (born Marion Deering; Mrs. Chauncey McCormick, 1886–1965), Chicago, and Barbara Danielson (born Barbara Deering; Mrs. Richard E. Danielson, 1888–1982), Groton, MA, 1927; Marion McCormick, after 1936 [“Violet Sargent (relief)” on Charles Deering collection list; collection list dates to 1936 or later; ownership not yet designated between daughters; copy in institutional archives]; by descent to her son Brooks McCormick (1917–2006), Chicago, 1965; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1976.
Linked open data
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- Object type
- AAT300301253
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