Bust from the Adams Memorial

This bust comes from the upper portion of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s 1886–91 full-figure tomb monument for Marian Hooper Adams, the wife of historian and philosopher Henry Adams, in Washington’s Rock Creek Cemetery. Because Marian’s death was a suicide and the couple was fascinated by Asian cultures, Henry asked Saint-Gaudens to avoid Christian symbolism and instead evoke the “contemplative compassion derived from Buddhist philosophy.” When Chicago architect Daniel Burnham visited Saint-Gaudens in 1892, he saw a plaster cast of the figure’s head and was enthralled by its mysterious yet meditative quality. In 1893, perhaps in celebration of Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition, Saint-Gaudens gave the bust to Burnham, who later had four bronzes cast from it.