Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s bold, charismatic personality placed him at the center of a vibrant artists community in Cornish, New Hampshire, where he spent his summers. Saint-Gaudens created a series of portraits of other artists and friends, of which this work is one of his best known. Saint-Gaudens met Robert Louis Stevenson through the artist Will Low. He modeled this portrait of the famous author in the traditional tondo format reminiscent of Renaissance portraiture in combination with the ancient Greek and Roman low-relief cameo style.