Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Medallions

"Jules Bastien-Lepage" 
by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"At this earlier time, in addition to my larger commissions, I made medallions which I exhibited at the Paris Salon, along with the statue of Farragut, in 1879. Then, too, through a mutual friend I met Bastien-Lepage, who was in the height of the renown he had achieved by his painting of Joan of Arc. This picture Mr. Irwin Davis subsequently purchased and, at my earnest recommendation, gave to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Lepage was short, bullet-headed, athletic and in comparison with the majority of my friends, dandified in dress. I recall his having been at the Beaux Arts during the period I studied there, and my disliking him for this general cockiness. He asked if I would make a medallion of him in exchange for a portrait of myself. Of course I agreed to the proposal, and as his studio was not far from mine, the medallion was modeled during a period when he was unable to work on account of a sprained ankle. He moved away shortly afterward, and I saw little of him except for the four hours a day when I posed for the full-length sketch he made of me. This painting was destroyed in the fire which burned my studio in 1904."

At this point, Homer Saint-Gaudens interjects:

"Of all the lesser commissions modeled at the time, the low reliefs, in especial were of importance, as they marked the real commencement of the series of medallions which he developed through his life until they became the one form of his art in which he considered himself a master. Yet none of the medallions he then modeled satisfied him to the extent of that of Bastien-Lepage, both because he believed the relief was as near perfection as he ever came, and because he was greatly interested in a rare combination of talent and vanity in his sitter. One example of this remains by me: my father's amusement in Lepage's often telling him not to draw the hands too large, the painter giving, as an excuse for his attitude, the reason that the hands were of small importance in comparison with the rest of the figure.

In another way, too, the medallion nearly led to further pleasure, as upon Lepage's showing his copy to the Princess of Wales, she immediately suggested that my father make the portrait of the Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward VII. Unfortunately, my father could remain only a little longer in Europe, so the relief was never modeled."

To be continued

* The inscription located across the top of the medallion reads: "JULES.BASTIEN-LEPAGE. AETATIS.XXXI.PARIS.M.D.C.C.C.LXXX.AVGVSTVS. SAINT-GAUDENS. FECIT." which means "Jules Bastien-Lepage, aged 31, Paris, 1880. Augustus Saint-Gaudens made [this]."

(Excerpts from "The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his son, Homer Saint-Gaudens.)