Robert Louis Stevenson

The Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94), author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped , and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, suffered from tuberculosis. Augustus Saint-Gaudens visited him in a New York hotel room to model this portrait. Instead of idealizing Stevenson, Saint-Gaudens presented the writer as he saw him—propped up on pillows and engaged in his craft. The inscribed text is Stevenson’s poem “To Will H. Low,” ending with the lines “Where hath fleeting beauty led' To the doorway of the dead. Life is over, life was gay: We have come the primrose way.” Low, a friend of both men, had introduced Saint-Gaudens to Stevenson.