Mildred and William Dean Howells

The American author and editor William Dean Howells championed realism in all writing, especially fiction. “I hope the time is coming,” he wrote, “when not only the artist, but the common, average man...will reject the ideal...in science, in literature, in art, because it is not ‘simple, natural, and honest.’” Saint-Gaudens’s style aligned well with Howells’s outlook. The famous writer is depicted here simply as a man reading a newspaper with his daughter.