Elihu Vedder

(b New York, 26 Feb 1836; d Rome, 29 Jan 1923).

American painter, illustrator, sculptor and writer. He studied under Tompkins Harrison Matteson in Shelbourne, NY, and went to Paris in March 1856. After eight months in the studio of François-Edouard Picot, he settled in Florence until the end of 1860. There he learnt drawing from Raffaello Bonaiuti, became interested in the Florentine Renaissance and attended the free Accademia Galli. A more significant artistic inspiration came from the Italian artists at the Caffè Michelangiolo: Telemaco Signorini, Vincenzo Cabianca (1827-1902) and especially Nino Costa (1827-1902). This group sought new and untraditional pictorial solutions for their compositions and plein-air landscapes and were particularly interested in the experiences of Gustave Courbet and the Barbizon painters. They became known as Macchiaioli for their use of splashes (macchia) of light and shadows and for their revolutionary (maquis) attitude to prevailing styles. Among Vedder's most notable Florentine landscapes are Mugnone Torrent near Fiesole (Detroit, MI, Inst. A.) and Le Balze, Volterra (Washington, DC, N. Mus. Amer. A.); he also made many sketches, drawings and pastels of the Tyrrhenian coast, Lake Trasimene, the Roman Campagna, Egypt and Capri, which exemplify the realistic approach to landscape practised by the artists of the Macchiaioli.

Vedder returned to New York and supported himself during the American Civil War (1861-5) as an illustrator for Vanity Fair and Leslie's Illustrated News. He also began painting such works as the Questioner of the Sphinx (1863; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.), the Lair of the Sea Serpent (1864; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.) and the Lost Mind (1864-5; New York, Met.), which evoke a melancholy atmosphere that presages European Symbolism. In 1865 he returned to Paris and joined William Morris Hunt and Charles Caryl Coleman (1840-1928) for painting in Brittany in the summer. After another visit to Rome in 1866, Vedder returned to New York in 1868, where he sold his landscape and genre paintings to Boston patrons and married Caroline Rosekrans who settled with him in Rome in October 1869. His works of this period include the tiny drawings of the Soul of the Sunflower (1868; priv. col., see exh. cat., fig. 142) and the Sea Princess (1868; priv. col., see exh. cat., fig. 143). A visit to London in 1870 resulted in contact with the Pre-Raphaelites and other English artists. Works such as the Cumaean Sibyl (1876; Detroit, MI, Inst. A.), Greek Girls Bathing (1877; New York, Met.) and Head of Medusa (1878; San Diego, CA, Mus. A.; see fig.) reveal the Classical subject-matter and stylistic linearity more commonly associated with Edward Burne-Jones, Frederic Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

During the 1880s Vedder returned almost every year to America, where he was active in the decorative arts, designing stained-glass windows for Louis Comfort Tiffany and illustrating five covers for The Century Illustrated (1881). His 56 drawings for Edward FitzGerald's translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (Washington, DC, N. Mus. Amer. A.) are some of the earliest examples of Art Nouveau in America, and this edition (pubd 1884) opened an era in American art publishing; these drawings also inspired Vedder to paint such works as the Cup of Death (1881; Washington, DC, N. Mus. Amer. A.) and The Pleiads (1885; New York, Met.). At the turn of the century he received many important commissions for mural painting, including those for the Walker Art Building (1892) at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, Collis P. Huntington's dining-room (1893; New York) and the five panels Government (1896-7; Washington, DC, Lib. Congr.). He also produced designs for small sculptural objects, including bell-pulls and door-knockers. His only large-scale work was The Boy (1900-02; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.), a fountain cast in bronze by Charles Keck.

After 1900 Vedder painted little, spending many months at his villa in Capri and writing his humorous, whimsical autobiography, The Digressions of 'V' (Boston, 1910), as well as two volumes of verse. Edgar P. Richardson compared Vedder's art to a visit to the Etruscan museum in the Villa Giulia, Rome, where bursting through the cold order of Roman art is a weird and haunting imagination, a fantastic invention that disconcerts and fascinates (see Soria, 1970, p. 6). (Source: REGINA SORIA, "Elihu Vedder," The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, (Oxford University Press, Accessed August 21, 2004), )