Sargent’s portrait of the young Homer Saint-Gaudens, the son of
the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his mother
Augusta, a cousin of Winslow Homer, is an intimate
portrait for a friend, not a commission that paid the bills. Sargent first
encountered Saint-Gaudens in Paris in 1878. When the artists met
again in New York in 1890, Saint-Gaudens expressed interest in
sculpting an image of Violet, and the painting was done in the spirit of
an exchange. Nonetheless, the fact that Sargent preferred a generic
title,
his mother’s name entirely may indicate the artist’s desire to elevate
his depiction of Homer Saint-Gaudens to a universal statement
about the nature of boys.
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