Elihu Vedder

Elihu Vedder (1836-1923)

Elihu Vedder was a prominent painter of both landscapes and visionary subjects as well as an acclaimed illustrator and muralist. He spent his youth in New York City and Cuba, where he father was a dentist. After his mother's death in 1852, Vedder briefly studied art with the painter Thompkins Harrison Matteson in Shelbourne, New York. Eager to study abroad, he left for Paris in summer 1856 accompanied by his friends Ben Day and Joseph Lemuel Rhodes. He enrolled in the atelier of the artist François Edouard Picot but soon became disenchanted with the rigid French academic teaching methods of imitation and drawing from classical casts.

In April 1857 Vedder went to Florence, where he studied drawing with the academic painter Raffaello Bonaiuti. Yet Bonaiuti's influence on Vedder's style was not as profound as that of the Macchiaioli, a group of young Tuscan painters who employed spots, or macchie, in their works. Giovanni Costa, a leader of the group, had a profound effect on Vedder's landscape style. Like the Macchiaioli, Vedder became concerned with capturing the effects of nature on canvas with the use of relatively few simple shapes.

By 1860 Vedder had exhausted his finances, and his father was reluctant to continue supporting his European travels. He returned to the United States shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. An arm injury exempted him from military service. Vedder settled in New York City and supported himself as an illustrator, producing a number of fine woodcuts for such noted magazines as “Vanity Fair” and “Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper”. He soon became part of the artistic and literary circles of New York and in 1865 was named an academician of the prestigious National Academy of Design. He also became involved with the art community in Boston, where he exhibited and became acquainted with the noted artists William Morris Hunt and John LaFarge.

Despite his success in America, Vedder's desire to return to Europe never waned. Eager to strengthen his technique, which was criticized by some American writers, he went to Paris at the end of 1856. Although he recognized the city as a center of artistic training, he nonetheless returned to Italy by the end of 1866 and remained there, except for periodic trips, until his death. In Rome, Vedder found the artistic inspiration for which he had yearned. In 1869 he married Caroline Rosenkrans, an American from Glen Falls, New York, who was instrumental in arranging exhibitions, corresponding with customers, and handling the sale of her husband's work.

In the 1870s Vedder spent several months in England, where he became acquainted with the painters George Frederick Watts and Lord Leighton. His contact with these artists would have a profound effect on his mature paintings, with respect to his subject choices and decorative style. Vedder was also deeply impressed by the art of William Blake, whose powerful visions and forays into book illustration no doubt influenced his own work .

Vedder continued to maintain close ties with the United States, periodically sending his work there for exhibition and sale. He exhibited at the William and Everett Gallery in Boston in 1879 in a show that brought him both fame and financial security. So much so, that in May 1883, Vedder, relying on his own resources, began work on his illustrations for the “Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám”. His initial interest in illustrating the somber quatrains of the “Rubáiyát” was prompted by the death of his young son Philip in 1874. Published in Boston in 1884, the book is seen as the crowning achievement of Vedder's career. In the late 1880s he produced several paintings derived from themes in the “Rubáiyát”. The subject of death and man's search for the meaning of existence were compelling themes for Americans at the turn of the century, and Vedder's art seemed to capture the spirit of the age.

Vedder was involved with the decorative arts movement and experimented with a wide variety of materials, including stained glass, bas reliefs, bronze statuettes, frames, and mosaics . In 1892 he was commissioned to execute a mural for the Walker Art Gallery at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. This first attempt at mural decoration--and its successful outcome--ensured many others, among them his 1893 decorations for the dining room of Collis P. Huntington's house in New York and a 1895 series of murals for the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. For these commissions, Vedder drew upon the use of his highly decorative style and his knowledge of Italian frescoes.

In 1900 Vedder began building Torre Quattro Venti, his home on Capri. He served as architect and supervised all aspects of the construction. The Vedders spent the summers and falls in Capri and the remainder of the year in Rome. Although he continued to paint, Vedder's interest after 1900 turned to writing. In 1910 he published his autobiography, “The Digressions of V”, and in 1923, a few days before his death, his book of poetry, “Doubt and Other Things”, was published.

Music--Girls Dancing with Floating Hair, ca. 1910

Oil on canvas, 8 1/2 x 13 in. (21.6 x 33 cm)

Signed (lower left and verso, lower right): Vedder

Gift of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1955.3)

“Music” depicts three classical women dancing in an unidentified space. The facelessness of the women and the unfinished nature of the composition indicate that the work is a sketch. The existence of another sketch and a drawing of the same subject suggest that Vedder may have considered the subject for a larger composition, which never came to fruition. He did, however, include the drawing in his book of poetry, “Doubt and Other Things”, which was published the year of his death.

Painted quite late in Vedder's career, “Music” reflects concerns similar to the American Renaissance interest in capturing allegory and moods. Vedder was a major proponent of this movement, and his many mural paintings of the 1890s, in particular his commission for the Collis P. Huntington house, include designs for such allegorical ideals as Victory and Poetry. Vedder successfully captured the ideal of music and its impact through the use of rhythmic vitality throughout the composition. The movement of the three figures is accomplished through the use of relatively simple shapes and the play of light on the drapery and skin.

“Music” is also comparable to “The Fates Gathering in the Stars” (1887; Art Institute of Chicago), a subject directly inspired by Vedder's illustrations for the “Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám”. The similarity of the works is seen both in the subject matter and in the recurrent use of the double swirl of two interlocking S shapes, a feature that Vedder created for the “Rubáiyát” illustrations. The artist described the meaning of the double swirl as "the gradual concentration of elements that combine to form life." (1) The energetic vitality of the interlocking S shapes in Music may perhaps reflect a vibrancy toward life that Vedder felt despite the many tragedies he experienced throughout his lifetime.

IB

Bibliography:

Elihu Vedder, “The Digressions of V” (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1910); Regina Soria, “Elihu Vedder: American Visionary Artist in Rome” (1836-1923), exhib. cat. (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970); Joshua C. Taylor et al., “Perceptions and Evocations: The Art of Elihu Vedder”, exhib. cat. (Washington, D.C. : National Collection of the Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1979).

Notes:

1. "Notes for Preface to Omar Khayyam Drawings," undated, unpaginated ms. in Vedder's hand, Elihu Vedder Papers, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York.

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