Louise Adele Gould

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1893 the New York lawyer Charles W. Gould commissioned Saint-Gaudens to complete a portrait of his late wife, Louise Adele Dickerson Gould (b. 1856), who died in 1883 at age twenty-six, after less than three years of marriage. Using photographs for reference, the sculptor modeled the demure Louise Gould as she appeared in fashionable bridal finery on her wedding day, St. Agnes Eve, January 20, 1881. The reference to St. Agnes, who is associated with purity and martyrdom, accentuates the melancholy of the sculpture. So too does its rectangular shape, which is evocative of a tombstone capped with an ornamental crest of acanthus scrolls, and the inscription on the lower portion of the panel: she seemed a splendid angel newly dressed save wings for heaven.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art