Louise Adele Gould

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

After Saint-Gaudens completed the high-relief portrait of Louise Gould (1856-1883) (15.105.1), her widower Charles Gould asked the sculptor to adapt the portrait to three dimensions. In this smooth bust-length rendering with a socle base, she is chastely dressed in a classicizing drape with knots at the shoulders. Gould expressed his pleasure at Saint-Gaudens’s ability to capture his wife’s "girlish simplicity and sweetness." This and the other two portraits of Louise Gould (15.105.1; 32.62.1) were translated to marble by the Piccirilli Brothers, the carvers of choice for such American leading sculptors as Saint-Gaudens, John Quincy Adams Ward, and Daniel Chester French.

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