ABSTRACT
In 1929, Augusta Savage, an artist associated with the Harlem Renaissance who would soon travel to Paris, offered a transnational rejoinder to the mythologies of the gamin de Paris. From Delacroix to Hugo and beyond, visual and literary paradigms of the mythical gamin were born of recurring political revolutions and overwhelmingly masculine, bourgeois identity constructions that responded to continuing struggles over visions and fantasies of nationhood. Although the enfant de la patrie may have temporarily seemed to win in Legrand's painting, the gamin du peuple was occasionally revived in retro mode during the early-twentieth century, even as more conventional topoi of the urchin as child of the nation were likewise recycled. The readers will appreciate all that is aggressive, mocking, devil-may-care, and unkempt in the bust and head of this gamin, in the line of the mouth and in the chin.
