American Painting and Sculpture

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS
(American, 1848-1907)

Actaeon (Vertumnus), 1881-82
Painted plaster relief
Gift of C. S. Paolo 1930.53

Augustus Saint-Gaudens created this plaster relief as a model for an inlaid sculpture that decorated the dining room of the Manhattan mansion of Cornelius Vanderbilt II. The room featured four panels, each made of precious wood with inlays of marble, bronze, copper, ivory, mother-of-pearl, and coral. They were based on a John La Farge watercolor and represented a god or goddess associated with fertility and the harvest—Bacchus, Ceres, Pomona, and Actaeon (sometimes identified instead as Vertumnus, Pomona’s husband). Only one of these original wooden panels, that of Ceres, survived the demolition of the mansion in 1927. The Actaeon panel is a painted plaster relief sculpted by Saint-Gaudens as a guide for the carvers who translated it into wood.