In 1888, Frederick William MacMonnies, who studied sculpture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, opened a studio in Paris. There he created dramatic figural sculpture that found favor at the annual French salons. In 1896, his life-sized version of Bacchante and Infant Faun caused something of a scandal with an American audience that was not yet entirely comfortable with the nude. Architect Charles Follen McKim offered the bronze as a gift to adorn the new Boston Public Library, decorated by numerous international art stars including John Singer Sargent. Driven by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the outcry against the Bacchante’s “drunken indecency” prevented the Library’s acceptance of the statue, but gained the expatriate MacMonnies invaluable publicity. Today, castings of Bacchante and Infant Faun in various sizes can be found in the permanent collections of most of the large museums in the United States and France.