Augustus Saint Gaudens. Bronze rectangular plaque. Jules Bastien-LePage. The artist holding his brushes. Titled and signed along the top. MDCCLXXX. Original oak frame. Brown patina with red compound in decoration creases. 14-1/2" x 10-3/8". Overall size: 33-1/2" x c21".

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS (1848-1907) rectangular bronze portrait plaque depicting Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884) Inscribed, dated and signed JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE AETATIS XXXI · PARIS · MDCCCLXXX · AVGVSTVS ·/SAINT-GAVDENS · FECIT across the top. This work is one of several editions of a bas relief portrait of Jules Bastien-Lepage by Saint-Gaudens. Modeled in 1880, Jules Bastien-Lepage was completed soon after the artist's Joan of Arc was given by a patron to New York's The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saint-Gauden's recommendation. The sculptor remembered Bastien-Lepage as "short, bullet-headed, athletic, and in comparison with the majority of my friends, dandified in dress" and his relief sculpture reflects both the artist's neat appearance and pride in his profession with palette and brushes readily displayed (Homer Saint Gaudens, ed. The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, New York, 1913, vol. 1, p. 215). According to his son Homer, Saint-Gaudens believed Jules Bastien-Lepage to be "as near perfection" as any of the portrait medallions he completed (as quoted in Saint Gaudens, ed., p. 219).

Provenance: descended in the Arthur Ashael Shurcliff family specifically via Margaret Homer (Nichols) Shurcliff (1879-1959). Margaret Shurcliff, whose family’s home (The Nichols House Museum) is on Mount Vernon Street in Beacon Hill, also had a summer home in Cornish, New Hampshire. Margaret Nichols was the wife of William A. Shurcliff. Margaret modeled as an archer with a drape for SAINT-GAUDENS as a young girl. Additional provenance: this medallion has resided at a related collateral residence of Thomas Mott Shawn in Concord, Massachusetts. Shaw was a noted Boston architect best known for his work with John D. Rockefeller,Jr. in helping to design much of what is now known as Colonial Williamsburg. Thomas Mott Shaw is a direct descendant of Robert Gould Shaw.

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