biography of Elihu VEDDER (1836-1923)

Birth place: NYC

Death place: Rome (Italy)

Addresses: NYC, 1862-66, 1882; Rome, Italy (1866-on)/Isle of Capri

Profession: Figure and mural painter, illustrator

Studied: began to study art at age 12; with T.H. Matteson, in Sherburne, N.Y.; with Picot in Paris, 1856; with R. Bonaiuti in Florence.

Exhibited: Brooklyn AA, 1863-72; Venice Biennale, 1867; NAD, 1862-82; Boston AC, 1873, 1876, 1880-81; PAFA Ann., 1880-85, 1893, 1898-99; Paris Expo, 1889 (prize); Pan-Am. Expo, Buffalo, 1901 (medal); AIC, 1913; Corcoran Gal. biennials, 1912, 1919.

Member: ANA, 1863; NA, 1865; SAA, 1880; Mural Painters; Century; Tile Club, 1861-65; NIAL.

Work: NMAA; MMA; LOC (murals, 1896-97); Bowdoin College (murals, 1894); CI; BMFA; AIC; BM; RISD; Corcoran Gal.; SFMA; Hudson River Mus.; LACMA; Worcester MA

Comments: Vedder spent much of his childhood in Schenectady, NY. He went to France in 1856 and then to Italy for several years, returning to the U.S. in 1861 and spending the war years in NYC. In 1865 he again went abroad to settle permanently in Italy. He made frequent visits to America, but Vedder's home was in Rome and he spent his summers on the Isle of Capri. Although he was well-known for his illustrations for The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1884), he was primarily a visionary painter of allegorical and mythical themes, infused with a mystical, haunting, sometimes bizarre imagery. His best known paintings are The Questioner of the Sphinx" (1863, BMFA); "The Lair of the Sea Serpent" (1864-65, MMA); and "The Lost Mind" (1864-65, MMA). In his later years he also painted a number of large murals. He was the author of Moods in Verse (1914); Doubt and Other Things (1923); and his autobiography, The Digressions of V (1910).

Sources: G&W; DAB; Tuckerman, Book of the Artists; Park, Mural Painters in America; WW21; Naylor, NAD; Falk, PA, vol. 2; Baigell, Dictionary; Regina Soria, Perceptions and Evocations: The Art of Elihu Vedder (exh. cat., NMAA, 1979); Detroit Inst. of Arts, The Quest for Unity, 136-38."