Augustus Saint-Gaudens

John Flanagan

1905–24, cast 1924 · Bronze · The American Wing

Flanagan was one of Saint-Gaudens’s most talented assistants, working in his studio between 1885 and 1890 before training in Paris and establishing his own successful career. Flanagan began modeling this bust in 1905 in New York and Cornish, New Hampshire, leaving it incomplete until 1920 when he received a commission from New York University for a portrait of the sculptor (1848-1907). Saint-Gaudens’s diminished physical appearance from intestinal cancer is masked in this robust likeness. Exuding creative intensity, he looks just as painter Kenyon Cox reminisced after his death in 1907: "That extraordinary head, with its heavy brow, beetling above the small but piercing eyes, its crisp and wiry hair, its projecting jaw and great, strongly modelled [sic] nose…alive with power."

Artist

John Flanagan

Date

1905–24, cast 1924

Medium

Bronze

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Francis Lathrop Fund, 1933