William Maxwell Evarts

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Early in his career, Saint-Gaudens secured several commissions for portrait busts of middle-aged male sitters, all of which he executed in the hybrid real-ideal style that was popular at the time. This portrait of the prominent attorney William Maxwell Evarts (1818–1901) is a vigorous, naturalistic bust terminating in a classicizing undraped chest and an ennobling herm. When he first met the sculptor in Rome, Evarts was based in Geneva, Switzerland, as the United States’s counsel at the Alabama claims tribunal, which had been convened to review sanctions against the British for aiding the Confederate cause during the Civil War.

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