Augustus Saint-Gaudens I
artist
Anders Zorn
(Mora, 1860 - 1920, Mora)
subject
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
(Dublin, 1848 - 1907, Cornish, New Hampshire)
Date1897
Place MadeSweden, Europe
MediumEtching on laid paper
Dimensions31 x 23.8 cm (12 3/16 x 9 3/8 in.)
ClassificationsPrints
Credit LineIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Accession number4.3.o.170
eMuseum ID728460
Original Number4.2.o.151
EmbARK ObjectID14105
TMS Source ID2932
Last Updated10/3/24
Status
Not on viewWeb CommentaryPainter and printmaker Anders Zorn and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens met at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and became fast friends and colleagues. They shared similar ebullient lifestyles and patrons including Isabella Stewart Gardner. Zorn frequently visited Saint-Gaudens’s studios in both New York and Paris, and in this etching, he captured his friend at rest in his artist’s smock. Apparently unsatisfied with his rendering, Zorn inscribed the print with “a bad portrait of St. Gaudens to Mrs. Gardner” when he gave it to her in 1897.
BibliographyNotesSven Lidbeck, Anders Zorn Etchings: Catalogue Raisonné (Helsinki, 2007), p. 150, ZG113.
Oliver Tostmann et al. Anders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2013), p. 136, fig. 79.
Elizabeth Reluga, "Commemorating Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment," Inside the Collection (blog), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 16 April 2020, https://www.gardnermuseum.org/blog/commemorating-robert-gould-shaw-54th-massachusetts-regiment
Oliver Tostmann et al. Anders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2013), p. 136, fig. 79.
Elizabeth Reluga, "Commemorating Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment," Inside the Collection (blog), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 16 April 2020, https://www.gardnermuseum.org/blog/commemorating-robert-gould-shaw-54th-massachusetts-regiment
MarksNotesSigned in plate (lower left): Zorn
Inscribed in graphite (lower margin): A bad Portrait of St. Gaudens to Mrs. Gardner. Zorn"
Numbered in graphite (lower right corner): 153
Numbered in graphite (verso, lower left corner): A.113
Inscribed in graphite (lower margin): A bad Portrait of St. Gaudens to Mrs. Gardner. Zorn"
Numbered in graphite (lower right corner): 153
Numbered in graphite (verso, lower left corner): A.113
ProvenanceNotesGift from Anders Zorn to Isabella Stewart Gardner around 1897.
