MANY ARTWORKS BY VEDDER ARE INCLUDED IN OUR 2005 HOLIDAY GIFT EXHIBITION.

Illustrator, figure painter, and mural painter Elihu Vedder was born in New York City in 1836, but spent much of his childhood in Schenectady, New York. He began to study art at age 12 and later studied with T.H. Matteson in Sherburne, New York; with Picot in Paris, 1856; and with R. Bonaiuti in Florence. He exhibited his work at the Brooklyn Art Association, the Venice Biennale, the National Academy of Design, the Boston Art Club, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the 1889 Paris Exposition, the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, and at the Corcoran Gallery. His work is held in many national collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bowdoin College, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, the Corcoran Gallery, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the Hudson River Museum.


Vedder was strongly drawn to Europe and the Mediterranean, and traveled there often. He went to France in 1856 and then to Italy for several years, returning to the United States in 1861. He spent the war years in New York City, but went abroad again in 1865, this time to settle permanently in Italy. Although he frequently visited America, he considered Rome to be his home, and he summered on the Isle of Capri. He became most well-known for his illustrations for The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1884), yet he was primarily a visionary painter of allegorical and mythical themes, infused with a mystical, haunting, sometimes bizarre imagery.