Artist · 44 prints
Elihu Vedder Prints
About Elihu Vedder
Elihu Vedder was an American painter and illustrator, born in New York City in 1836 and died in Rome in 1923. He studied in New York and then in Paris from 1856 to 1861, finishing his training in Italy. Back in the United States during the Civil War, he scraped a living drawing comic valentines and magazine illustrations, then settled permanently in Rome in 1866, though he often visited America.
Elihu Vedder is known for strange, dreamlike paintings drawn from imagination and myth, which link him to Symbolism. Early works include The Lair of the Sea Serpent, painted in the mid-1860s and now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His best-known project is his set of drawings for Edward FitzGerald's translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1884), with swirling figures and cosmic imagery. He also painted murals, including a lunette for Bowdoin College (1894) and, in 1896–97, wall paintings and a mosaic of Minerva for the Library of Congress in Washington.
Elihu Vedder prints: reproductions of the Symbolist paintings and illustrations American artist Elihu Vedder made between 1863 and 1899. Works in the collection include The Questioner of the Sphinx (1863), The Cumaean Sibyl (1876), The Pleiades (1885), Head of Minerva (1896) and plates from his Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1883–86).
This selection concentrates on Vedder's drawings for the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, with swirling figures, stars, cups and vines, alongside his paintings of myth and legend: sibyls, Medusa, Samson and Delilah, the Fates and the Pleiades. It also includes studies for his Library of Congress murals and a view from a trip to Egypt.
The Rubáiyát plates suit studies, libraries and reading rooms, and look good hung as a series; the larger mythological paintings work in living rooms and hallways. All prints are museum-quality reproductions, available unframed or framed with low-glare acrylic glazing, with free shipping and import duties covered.
