Bacchante and Infant Faun

Replica in the Boston Public Library courtyard

The life-size nude, depicting the joyous, fluid movement of a woman celebrating while holding an infant, was exhibited at the 1894 Paris Salon to great acclaim. MacMonnies gifted this original casting to his friend, architect Charles Follen McKim, whose firm was building Boston's new public library in Copley Square. McKim offered Bacchante as a gift to the Boston Public Library (BPL) in 1896, to be placed in the fountain of the library's courtyard. Both the library board of trustees and the Boston Art Commission accepted the gift, and the majority of public opinion endorsed the placement of Bacchante at the library after it was temporarily installed in November 1896.

However, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Watch and Ward Society and local religious groups caused such a sustained public outcry citing its perceived "drunken indecency" that McKim withdrew the gift in May 1897, to save the BPL further controversy.[2] McKim gave the statue to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.[3][4]

The press coverage and notoriety around the refused gift allowed MacMonnies to sell many reduced-size replicas.[4] Copies of the Bacchante in bronze or marble of various sizes can now be found in the permanent collections of many museums in the United States and France.[5] A reduced-size version of the sculpture rendered in bronze resides in a private collection in Provenance, New York. The miniature rendition (which stands 30.125 inches (76.52 cm) tall) of the work that once struggled to find a home sold for $4,800 at a 2009 auction.[6]

Shortly after the appearance of Bacchante at the 1894 Salon, France attempted to purchase the original casting for its national art collection. MacMonnies produced a replica casting, which was installed in France's Luxembourg Museum of contemporary art.

A later full-sized bronze casting, originally purchased from MacMonnies' studio by transportation magnate Charles Yerkes, was purchased at auction and loaned to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston by George Robert White in 1910.[5] It was later bequeathed to the MFA in 1930 by White's sister, Mrs. Harriet J. Bradbury,[5] and is now on display in the MFA's new Arts of the Americas Wing.[7] Almost a century after the original controversy, the Boston Public Library reversed itself and commissioned its own bronze copy made from the MFA copy. This replica is now displayed surrounded by a fountain in the garden courtyard of the BPL, as originally intended by the donor.[3][8] Another copy resides at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Another copy resides at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

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