Saint-Gaudens left numerous portraits of his contemporaries: painters (Kenyon Cox, William Picknel, Jules Bastien-Lepage, writers (Robert Louis Stevenson and rich American patrons (Samuel Gray Ward).
Inspired by the 15th century Italian miniature painters Pisanello and Chapu, he portrayed faces in profile but he made the frame tighter. The model, now framed at bust or half-length, seemed to push the portrait forwards giving the portrait its bold, psychological dimension. Inscriptions placed above or below the portrait identified the person and were sometimes closely positioned to the portrait, as in the relief of Dr Henry Shif, thus playing an aesthetic role.
The frequently nervous treatment of the portraits and the foil actually marked an artistic renewal. The reliefs by Saint-Gaudens are somewhere between painting and sculpture and the characters are often treated in a sketch-like manner. They transcribe "a thing's aspect rather than its reality" as the painter Kenyon Cox observed. As from 1875, the New York critics were wondering what had happened to the notion of a "finished" work and disapproved of these new trends. It was in 1877 that Augustus Saint-Gaudens became actively involved in founding the Society of American Artists, and was ready to stand up and be counted among the members who were currently revolutionising the academic notion of "finished". The sketch was no longer synonymous with an unfinished work.
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