Mrs. Stanford White (Bessie Springs Smith)

Mrs. Stanford White (Bessie Springs Smith)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Saint-Gaudens completed this portrait of Bessie Smith White (1862-1950) on the occasion of her marriage to the architect Stanford White in 1884. Modeling the portrait was the sculptor’s gift to the couple, and he then funded its translation to marble to settle a debt with White. Bessie White is depicted in her bridal ensemble, brushing aside the flowing veil and holding rose blooms symbolizing love and beauty. By the mid-1880s, Saint-Gaudens’s style of relief sculpture was more technically ambitious, incorporating passages of low and high relief, ranging from the sketchy veil to the deeply undercut chin. The tabernacle frame with a scrollwork and floral pattern was designed by White.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mrs. Stanford White (Bessie Springs Smith)Mrs. Stanford White (Bessie Springs Smith)Mrs. Stanford White (Bessie Springs Smith)Mrs. Stanford White (Bessie Springs Smith)Mrs. Stanford White (Bessie Springs Smith)

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.