Artwork story
About Augustus Saint-Gaudens
The artist and artwork
Kenyon Cox painted Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1887 as an oil-on-canvas portrait of one artist at work, seen through the eyes of another. The Paris-trained American painter shows the celebrated sculptor in profile inside his New York studio, wearing a pale work shirt and extending one hand toward a clay relief. The quiet, earth-toned palette and close horizontal composition emphasize concentration and skilled labor rather than public fame. The picture also reflects Cox's interest in disciplined drawing, classical form, and the working life of artists.
The world around it
The portrait originated during the Gilded Age, when growing American cities, wealthy patrons, museums, and architects commissioned ambitious public art. Paris-trained artists helped shape the American Renaissance, using European academic traditions to express national cultural authority. Saint-Gaudens became central to that movement, redirecting American sculpture from conventional Neoclassicism toward a more naturalistic style and later advising the sculpture program of Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Cox's studio scene brings that public movement to human scale: monuments begin with an artist studying a face and pressing a form into clay.
A detail to notice
The canvas reconstructs a friendship. Cox and Saint-Gaudens met in Paris in the 1870s and agreed in 1887 to exchange portraits: an oil painting for a bronze relief. The original painting was destroyed in the 1904 fire at Saint-Gaudens's studio, so Cox made this replica for The Met's 1908 memorial exhibition. Saint-Gaudens is shown modeling painter William Merritt Chase, while a bronze likeness of his son Homer hangs on the wall. Cox also uses crisp profile, echoing the relief portraits for which his friend was known. One portrait therefore contains several others and survives because Cox recreated a lost work after the sitter's death.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is painting made in Oil on canvas and held in The American Wing.
Recorded dimensions include 33 1/2 x 47 1/8 in. (85.1 x 119.7 cm).
Subject terms include Men, Portraits, and Artists. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Gift of friends of the artist, through August F. Jaccaci, 1908.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-23.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
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