Bacchante+and+Infant+Faun

Date: 1894
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1968/1968.23_1a.jpg?itok=Z8XRaz7I width="213" height="339" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/bacchante-and-infant-faun-15475"]] || Title: **Bacchante and Infant Faun**

Artist: **Frederick MacMonnies** Born: New York, New York 1863 Died: New York, New York 1937

Medium: Jaboeuf & Rouard Founders (Founder) bronze Dimensions: 34 x 10 3/4 x 14 1/2 in. (86.3 x 27.4 x 36.8 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase

Accession: 1968.23 || A nineteen-year-old mother and baby modeled for Frederick MacMonnies’ most popular work, //Bacchante and Infant Faun//. Bacchantes were mythological figures who served the infant god of wine, Bacchus. The French government bought a cast of the statue at the 1894 Paris Salon, securing MacMonnies’ reputation as a formidable sculptor. The original version was later put on display at the Boston Public Library, where it caused one of the greatest art scandals of the decade. Citizens were upset, not only because the statue represented debauchery and drunkenness, but also because the sculptor had shamelessly modeled a “naked” person rather than a classical nude figure.
 * About the Artwork: **

“I had made this design long before, but I never found the model for it. . . Then a woman came in and I said, ‘there is my Bacchante!’” Artist quoted in Margaret Conrads, American Paintings and Sculpture at the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, 1990

MacMonnies Biography
 * Resources: **

About the Artist SAAM Collections Page
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Links: **