Charles Stewart Butler and Lawrence Smith Butler

Rendered in a delicate, shallow bas-relief, these two young brothers wear Scottish kilts and sporran pouches. Six-year-old Lawrence Smith Butler embraces four-year-old Charles Stewart Butler, who tenderly clasps the older boy's hand. As recorded in a beautifully lettered dedication below their profile figures, the work was modeled from October 1880 to March 1881.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens made this dual portrait as a favor to his friend, the architect Stanford White, who in 1884 was to marry the boys' aunt. White presented a bronze relief to Prescott Hall Butler, the boys' father, a prominent New York attorney. Saint-Gaudens cast this plaster version as a memento for White. Behind the brothers, a ribbon interlace contains a comforting Latin verse from Virgil's _Aeneid_: "God will give an end to these bad times." The reasons for including this text alluding to a difficult time for White, Butler, or the children remain a mystery today, but must have been understood by the relief's first audience.

More information on this object can be found in the Gallery publication _European Sculpture of the Nineteenth Century_, which is available as a free PDF <u>https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/european-sculpture-19th-century.pdf</u>