In the summer of 1893, Zorn was in Chicago as commissioner for the Swedish art section of the World’s Columbian Exposition. Here he met Saint-Gaudens, whom he would later visit in New York and in Paris. His first etching of Saint-Gaudens, dated 1897, was completed in New York in Saint-Gaudens’ 27th Street Studio. The second portrait etching was completed in December, 1898, in Paris. Zorn received a bronze cast of the Head of Victory by Saint-Gaudens as a belated gift in 1906, for the portraits he had done of Saint-Gaudens, and for the admiration he held for the model Hettie Anderson.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, etching, 1898,
6 11/16 x 8 13/16 inches (17 x 22.4 cm.),
collection of SGNHS