The Met - Modeling a Relief - 17" x 13" - Brown

This Met x Wendover Art Group design is a reproduction of an original work of art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art collection. Cox and Augustus Saint-Gaudens met in Paris in the 1870s and exchanged portraits in 1887: an oil painting for a bronze relief. The original canvas was lost in Saint-Gaudens’s 1904 studio fire, so Cox created this replica in time for The Met’s 1908 memorial exhibition of the sculptor’s work. Saint-Gaudens is shown in his New York studio, modeling in clay a portrait relief of the artist William Merritt Chase. A bronze likeness of the sculptor’s son, Homer, hangs on the wall. Cox cleverly echoed his friend’s portrait reliefs by showing him in profile.