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. (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.