Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens thoroughly enjoyed Robert Louis Stevenson's collection of short stories New Arabian Nights and asked a mutual friend, Will H. Low, to introduce him to the writer. Low arranged a meeting and Stevenson sat for a portrait in 1887-88. The sculptor and writer became fast friends over the course of the sittings. Stevenson's tuberculosis confined him to his bed, so Saint-Gaudens chose to portray him in his familiar writing position, propped up on pillows.

Saint-Gaudens first cast the portrait as a full-length figure in a horizontal rectangle and then altered the design to a circular medallion. Stevenson was quite pleased with the portrait, especially the inscription from his poem Underwoods. After Stevenson's death in 1894, Saint-Gaudens cast new editions in homage to the writer, and versions of various sizes were produced through the mid-1920s. Other examples appear in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana; and the Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey.