Mrs. Stanford White (Bessie Springs Smith)

Mrs. Stanford White (Bessie Springs Smith)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Saint-Gaudens frequently experimented with the size, format, and medium of his works, often driven to further refine completed compositions. The sculptor revised the original marble rectangular portrait of Bessie Springs Smith White (1862-1950) (1976.388) to a bust-length tondo format, relocating the inscription and adding an ivy-vine border alluding to affection and friendship. This bronze cast was in fact a gift of friendship to Mary Lawrence Tonetti, who was one of Saint-Gaudens’s studio assistants during the 1890s and a distant cousin of the sitter.

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.