The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Bulletin

Augustus Saint-Gaudens
American, 1848-1907
Eva Rohr
Dated 1872
Marble
Height, i85/8 in. (47.3 cm)
Signed and dated (on the base): Aug St Gaudens/187z Roma
Gift of Allan H. Smith, i990
1990.317
Eva Rohr is Augustus Saint-Gaudens's first portrait bust executed
for a patron. The marble bust was commissioned in
i872 by Eva Rohr's sister, Hannah Rohr Tuffs. Over a decade
earlier, Saint-Gaudens had carved a posthumous cameo portrait
of her husband, John Tuffs, a New York lawyer. He also
had carved a cameo portrait of Hannah Tuffs when he met the
sisters in Rome after he was forced to interrupt his studies at
the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and flee Paris during the Franco-
Prussian War of I870-7I. Both cameos were acquired by the
Museum last year (acc. nos. I990o.78.I,za,b).
The frontal pose and downcast eyes of the portrait of Eva
Rohr (d. 19I6) reveal Saint-Gaudens's early penchant for
realism. The sitter, who was the youngest daughter of John
Rohr, the wealthy New York publisher of the Stadt Zeitung, is
depicted in the dress of the village maid Marguerite, a character
from Charles-Franqois Gounod's grand opera, Faust; a role
Rohr was probably learning as a student in Rome when this
sculpture was carved. The bust is mounted on a Gothic-style
pedestal, which is an integral part of the composition. The
base is inscribed "I'm neither/lady neither fair/And home I
can/go without your/care/Faust." The quote is a translation
from the original French libretto of the final trio in the opera's
fourth act, in which Marguerite encounters Faust and
Mephistopheles one last time before meeting her doom.
DJH
Bibliography: John H. Dryfhout, The Work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens,
Hanover, New Hampshire, 198z, p. 57, cat. no. z4; Kathryn Greenthal,
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Master Sculptor (exhib. cat.), New York,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, i985, p. 70, fig. 50.