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.

[1] 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.

[1] Saint-Gaudens's name for the bronze figure is The Mystery of the Hereafter and The Peace of God that Passeth Understanding, but the public commonly called it Grief – an appellation that Henry Adams apparently disliked.

Every magazine writer wants to label it as some American patent medicine for popular consumption – Grief, Despair, Pear's Soap, or Macy's Men's Suits Made to Measure.

In his The Education ... Henry Adams reflects on the statue and its interpreters: "His first step, on returning to Washington, took him out to the cemetery known as Rock Creek, to see the bronze figure which St. Gaudens had made for him in his absence.