(For his spirit rebels at the weakness of the flesh. Still...)
For his spirit rebels at the weakness of the flesh. Still fondly round his heart are curled the clinging tendrils of this dear old world, and defiant of the processes of time, he writes, A man once told me he began near St. Peter s, then moved to the Repetta, then to the Tritone always getting nearer the cemetery of San Lorenzo. I, on the contrary, began my Roman life in this very house, circled about Rome, and now find myself just where I started so many years ago. Since Vedder first saw Rome in 1857, his visits to these United States have been few and infrequent. For more than three score years he has dwelt apart, in Rome and Capri. Living in retirement, shunning publicity, Vedder has been really known only to those friends who, by persistence or propinquity, have penetrated the first bulwarks of reserve with which he has isolated himself. Once the first barrier was broken, he has given of himself and of his personality without stint. Detached from the trivialities of modern life, he is, from his aerie, keenly observant of them. Unaffected by the petty eddies that swirl contemporary literary and artistic life, he boldly breasts the strong main currents. He has consorted with Michael A ngelo, Leonardo, Durer, and the great of earth, and interprets life as would they today. But his vision of the world is his own, and those who know him and his work catch wonderful glimpses, not only through his painting and his less known sculpture, but of late through his verse. Whatever he does, in paint, or clay, or words, is always expressive of vision. To one who remarked that an artist should be just an artist up to his eyes, Vedder retorted, Yes, but look at Durer and Da Vinci.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
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The Digressions of V: Written for His Own Fun and That of His Friends (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from The Digressions of V: Written for His Own Fu...)
Excerpt from The Digressions of V: Written for His Own Fun and That of His Friends
First Faint Glimpse of Fame The Evolution of Jane Jack son H. M. A Slavery Lecture I receive a Letter.
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Miscellaneous Moods in Verse: One Hundred and One Poems With Illustrations 1914
(Originally published in 1914. This volume from the Cornel...)
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Elihu Vedder was an American figure, mural painter and illustrator.
Background
Elihu Vedder was born on February 26, 1836, in New York. He was the son of Elihu and Elizabeth Vedder, and a descendant of Harmon Albertse Vedder, an early Dutch settler in Schenectady, New York.
He spent much of his boyhood in Schenectady, with several trips to Cuba, where his father was engaged in business.
Education
For a time, Vedder attended the Brinkerhoff School in Jamaica, Long Island. His artistic talent asserted itself early, and as a boy of twelve he began to study art by himself.
Career
For a time, Vedder worked under Tompkins H. Matteson in Sherburne, New York. In 1856, he went to Europe, where he studied under Francois Edouard Picot in Paris for eight months and then went to Florence to live. Returning to America, he arrived penniless in New York at the outbreak of the Civil War. Serious work met with no success, and he resorted to such pot-boilers as comic valentines, sketches for Vanity Fair, and diagrams for dumb-bell exercises for a teacher of calisthenics.
During these difficult times, living in a bare room in Beekman Street, he conceived the ideas for his early pictures, "The Fisherman and the Genii, " "The Roc's Egg, " "The Questioner of the Sphinx, " "The Lost Mind, " and "The Lair of the Sea-Serpent, " but it was not until 1865 that he succeeded in finishing them. In that year, he was admitted into the National Academy, became a member of the Society of American Artists, and for a second time went abroad.
After spending sometime in France, he went early in 1867 to Rome, where he made his home for the rest of his life, though he also had a villa on the island of Capri. He made frequent visits to America, where he held periodical exhibitions of his work, now received with increasing admiration. It was in 1884 that he published his series of more than fifty illustrations to the Rub iy t of Omar Kh yyam, his magnum opus. When his works were exhibited in Boston in the spring of 1887, they were accompanied by a group of sixteen paintings, the "Cup of Death, " the "Soul between Doubt and Faith, " the "Fates Gathering in the Stars, " and the "Last Man. "The originality and solemnity of these motives, in which Vedder gave thrilling hints of an unknown world and intangible realities, made a deep impression. In the last phase of his life as an artist, he turned to mural decoration.
On the wall of the staircase landing in the Library of Congress, Washington, is his large mosaic "Minerva" (1897), with five wall paintings (1896) which symbolize "Government, " "Corrupt Legislation, " "Anarchy, " "Good Administration, " "Peace and Prosperity. " In conception, they show but little invention, and in imaginative force, they fall below the standard set by the easel paintings. They have the dignity befitting their place in a great public building, but they are devoid of charm. The tympanum (1894) which decorates the west wall of the Walker Art Building, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, is a more satisfactory example of Vedder's weighty style.
He also decorated a ceiling (1893) in the C. P. Huntington mansion in New York, the subject being "The Sun with the Four Seasons. " Examples of his painting may be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, at Wellesley College, and the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
a member of the Society of American Artists, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Personality
The distinctive merit of Vedder's work is its rare imaginative power and thoughtfulness. His workmanship is heavy; his color is not remarkable. He is essentially a painter of abstract ideas rather than visible realities, and he penetrated farther into that realm than any other American painter except Albert Pinkham Ryder.
The character of these drawings, which he called accompaniments, was ponderously beautiful. They had the charm of sweeping rhythmic line that is the preeminent technical merit of his designs, and supplemented the text with genuine insight and deep sympathy.
Connections
Vedder was married to Caroline Beach Rosekrans of Glens Falls, New York, July 13, 1869. He had three children.