Masterpieces

SAINT-GAUDENS, Augustus

Dublin, Ireland, 1848 - Cornish, New Hampshire, 1907
Came to the United States as a child.

Robert Louis Stevenson

MEDOR 1436

1899

Bronze medal, black patina

D: 0, 34 m.

Paris, Musée d'Orsay

Inscription

To the left of the figure: three horizonal stanzas of a poem:
YOUTH NOW FLEES ON FEATHERED FOOT / FAINT AND FAINTER SOUNDS THE FLUTE / RARER SONGS OF GOD AND STILL / SOMEWHERE ON THE SUNNY HILL / OR ALONG THE WINDING STREAM / THROUGH THE WILLOWS FLITS A DREAM / FLITS BUT SHOWS A SMILING FACE / FLEES BUT WITH SO QUAINT A GRACE / NONE CAN CHOOSE TO STAY AT HOME / ALL MUST FOLLOW ALL MUST ROAM /

THIS IS UNBORN BEAUTY SHE / NOW IN AIR FLOATS HIGH AND FREE / TAKES THE SUN AND BREAKS THE BLUE / LATE WITH STOOPING PINION FLEW / RACING HEDGEROW TREES AND WET / HER WING IN SILVER STREAMS AND SET / SHINING FOOT ON TEMPLE ROOF / NOW AGAIN SHE FLIES ALOOF / COASTING MOUNTAIN CLOUDS AND KISSED / BY THE EVENING'S AMETHYST /

IN WET WOOD AND MIRY LANE / STILL WE PANT AND POUND IN VAIN / STILL WITH LEADEN FOOT WE CHASE / WANING PINION FAINTING FACE / STILL WITH GREY HAIR WE STUMBLE ON / TILL BEHOLD THE VISION GONE / WHERE HATH FLEETING BEAUTY LED / TO THE DOORWAY OF THE DEAD / LIFE IS OVER LIFE WAS GAY / WE HAVE GONE THE PRIMROSE WAY

To the left of the first stanza: TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

To the right of the first stanza: AUGUSTUS SAINT -GAUDENS

Beneath the third stanza: MDCCCLXXXVII

Medals

From 1865 to 1900

Historical

Purchased from the artist for the Musée du Luxembourg, 1899.

Comment

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894) was a Scottish poet and writer. He posed for this portrait in New York in Septembr of 1887.

Related works

Other casts: American Academy of Arts and Letters; Coffee House Club, New York City; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey; Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire; Robert Louis Stevenson School, Pebble Beach, California; Textile Museum, Washington, D.C.; Upland Country Day School, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania; collections particuliers, Bronxville, New York et Plainfield, New Hampshire; American Friends Service Committee, Davis House, Washington, D.C.; American Numismatic Society, New York City; Amherst College, Mead Art Museum, Amherst, Massachusetts; Anglo-American Museum, Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine; Carnegie Institute Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; Dublin Municipal Art Gallery, Dublin, Ireland; Gilcrease Institute of History and Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland; Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York; University of Miami Library, Miami, Florida; National Academy of Design, New York City, New York; New York Historical Society, New York City, New York; Rose Nichols House Museum, Boston, Massachusetts; Players' Club, New York City, New York; Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey; Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire; Silverado Museum, St. Helena, California; Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri; Robert Louis Stevenson School, Pebble Beach, California; Yale University, Beinecke Library, New Haven, Connecticut, collections particuliers, Hartsdale, New York; New York City, New York; Old Saybrook, Connecticut; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Weston, Massachusetts.

Bibliography

Bond, pp. 76-78;

C. Louis Hind, 1887;

Hollingsworth;

Greenthal, pp. 119-22;

Wilkinson, pp. 173-83, 370, 397-98;

"Paris Studio Talk (Exhibition of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts), " The Studio, vol. 14, July 1898, p. 139;

Gaston Migeon, "Le sculpteur Augustin Saint-Gaudens, " dans Art et décoration, t. V, janvier - juin 1899, p. 49, repr.;

S. Colvin, ed., The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, London, 1900, vol. 2, pp. 289-90, 305-06, 340;

C. Roger Marx, Les Médailleurs Modernes à l'Exposition Universelle de 1900, Paris, 1901, repr. pl. 28;

C. Roger Marx, "The Medallists' Art as Seen at the Paris Exhibition, " The Studio, vol. 22, May 1901, p. 230;

Royal Cortissoz, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Boston and New York, 1907, pp. 17-18, 25 (repr. p. 25);

C. Louis Hind, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, London, 1908, pp. XXVII-XXVIII, XL-XLI;

Will C. Low, A Chronicle of Friendship, New York, 1908;

Catalogue of a Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, 1908, p. 62, n° 119;

L. Forrer, Biographical Dictionary of Medallists, vol. II, London 1909, p. 255 (215?), vol. V, London, p. 300;

H. Saint-Gaudens, ed., Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Century Co., New York, 1913, vol. I, pp. 367, 373-89; vol. II, pp. 125-29, 227, 297;

Lorado Taft, Modern Tendencies in Sculpture, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1917, repr. p. 283;

André Dezarrois, "Le Musée des écoles étrangères, " Le Revue de l'Art ancien et moderne, 1926, vol. 49, p. 160-172, p. 168;

Trois siècles d'art aux Etats-Unis: Exposition organisée en collaboration avec le Museum of Art, New-York, Musée du Jeu de Paume, Paris, 1938, p. 51;

Ronald Alley, Tate Gallery Catalogue: the Foreign Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture, London, 1959, n° 3431,

John H. Dryfhout, "Robert Louis Stevenson, " in Metamorphoses in Nineteenth-Century Sculpture, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1975, pp. 187-200;

Jeremy Cooper, Nineteenth-Century Romantic Bronzes, 1830-1915, London, 1975, repr. p. 14;

"Editorial: Mount Parnassus, " Apollo, mai 1980, repr. p. 344;

The Register of the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, vol. V, n° 10, spring 1982, repr. p. 122;

John H. Dryfhout, The Work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (catalogue raisonné) Hanover and London, University Press of New England, 1982, pp. 174-76, n° 132 repr., 261-63, n° 188 repr.;

Marble and Bronze: 100 Years of American Sculpture 1840-1940, Washington, D.C., Adams Davidson Galleries, 1984, n° 10;

Kathryn Greenthal, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Master Sculptor, New York,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston, G.R. Hall & Co., 1986, pp. 89-90, 119-23, 174;

Kathryn Greenthal, Paula M. Kozol, Jan Seidler Ramirez, American Figurative Sculpture, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1986, pp. 242-44;

Barbara A. Baxter, The Beaux-Arts Medal in America, the American Numismatic Society, New York, 1986 (26 septembre 1986 - 16 avril 1987), p. 29-31.

S. Lindsay and H. H. Reed, The National Sculpture Society Celebrates the Figure, National Sculpture Society, New York, 1987, p. 76 repr.;

Gilbert Sigaux, "Vie de R. L. Stevenson, " dans Robert Louis Stevenson, L'ile au trésor, Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 1990, pp. 313-329;

Fiona Pearson, ed., Virtue and Vision: Sculpture and Scotland 1540-1990, National Gallery of Scotland, 1991, p. 169;

Viewpoints - European sculpture 1875-1925, Shepherd Gallery, 1991, pp. 38-39;

Paula Freedman, American Sculpture at Yale University, 1992, pp. 155-56;

Augustus Saint-Gaudens 1848-1907: Un maître de la sculpture américaine, Paris, Editions Somogy, 1999, pp. 164-66.