The Adams Memorial is a grave marker for Marian Hooper Adams and Henry Adams located in Section E of Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D.C. The memorial features a cast bronze allegorical sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (which he called, The Mystery of the Hereafter and The Peace of God that Passeth Understanding, but was often called in the newspapers, "Grief"). Saint-Gaudens' shrouded-figure statue is seated against a granite block which takes up one side of a hexagonal plaza, designed by architect Stanford White. Across from the statue is a stone bench for visitors. The whole is sheltered by a close screen of dense conifers. History Marian, known as Clover since childhood, was born into an affluent, patrician, liberal Boston family. Erected in 1891, the monument was commissioned by author/historian Henry Adams (a member of the Adams political family) as a memorial to his wife, Marian "Clover" Hooper Adams. Suffering from depression, she had killed herself by ingesting potassium cyanide, a chemical used to develop photographs. She was known to be witty, and was a widely traveled photographer and linguist; her translations and research were invaluable to her more celebrated husband, Henry. Adams advised Saint-Gaudens to contemplate iconic images from Buddhist devotional art. One such subject, Kannon (also known as Guan Yin, the Bodhisattva of compassion), is frequently depicted as a seated figure draped in cloth. In particular, a painting of Kannon by Kanō Motonobu, in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and shown to Saint-Gaudens by John LaFarge, is said to have played a major role in influencing the conception and design of this sculpture. The malachite-green figure sits on a mottled red granite platform, a remarkable exception in a sea of earlier memorials cut from monochromatic stone. Henry Adams, who traveled to Japan with John LaFarge ostensibly to find inspiration for this memorial, particularly wanted elements of serenely immovable Buddhist human figures to be contrasted with the waterfall-like robe associated with Kannon. They had met while La Farge was engaged in creating the interiors for Boston's Trinity Church (1873–77), a milestone American building by Henry Hobson Richardson, who also designed Adams's Washington home. La Farge expanded Adams's knowledge of Eastern art and philosophy, which was in vogue in elegant circles at that time. In addition to the still and flowing elements, the monument's dualism includes male-female fusion in the figure itself and blends Asian and European ideals