Bust from the Adams Memorial

Modeled 1892–93, cast 1912

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

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.

Status: On View, Gallery 179
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Title: Bust from the Adams Memorial
Place: United States (Object made in)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Modeled 1892–1893
Medium: Bronze
Dimensions: 51.4 × 30.5 × 26.7 (20 1/4 × 12 × 10 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Bequest of Brooks McCormick
Reference Number: 2007.389
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/191184/manifest.json

Annual Report (Art Institute of Chicago, 2007–2008), p. 19.
Annelise K. Madsen, John Singer Sargent and Chicago’s Gilded Age, exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2018), 102–4, fig. 77.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.