Description
This fountain sculpture is one of an edition of at least four that were produced collaboratively by the painter Elihu Vedder and the sculptor Charles Keck. The two artists met in Rome, where Vedder lived, while Keck was studying at the American Academy. The sculpture is one of the many decorative art objects that Vedder designed during his career; others include door knockers, bell pulls, and firebacks. This work, however, is the only large-scale piece produced from one of his designs. Originally nude, the figure was adorned with a modest scarf sometime after it was cast.
Accession Number
52724
Medium
Bronze
Dimensions
106.7 × (diam. of pan on figure's head) 53 cm (42 × 20 7/8 in.)
Classification
sculpture
Credit Line
Roger McCormick Fund
Background & Context
Background Story
Elihu Vedders The Boy from 1900-02 is a bronze sculpture that reveals a side of the artist best known for his Rubaiyat illustrations: his engagement with three-dimensional form and the human figure as an independent artistic medium. Vedder, who spent much of his career in Italy, was deeply influenced by the sculptural tradition of classical and Renaissance Rome, and The Boy reflects this influence in its combination of naturalistic observation and idealizing simplification. The figure stands in a relaxed contrapposto that recalls Greek classical sculpture, but the treatment of the surface and the gentle melancholy of the boys expression are distinctly turn-of-the-century in character, belonging to the same moment of aesthetic reverie that produced Rodins Age of Bronze and the early work of Medardo Rosso. The years 1900-02 bracket the turn of the century and Vedders sixtieth birthday, a period when the artist was consolidating his late style and exploring media beyond the painting and illustration for which he was best known. The bronze medium, with its capacity for capturing both the general form and the most subtle surface modulations, allows Vedder to translate the dreamlike quality of his two-dimensional work into the round, creating a figure that exists in the ambiguous space between reality and reverie that characterizes all of his best work.
Cultural Impact
Vedders sculpture represents an important but underappreciated aspect of American art at the turn of the century, when painters and illustrators were exploring three-dimensional form as a way of extending the symbolic and decorative programs of their two-dimensional work. The Boy demonstrates that the boundary between fine art and illustration was more porous in this period than conventional art history acknowledges.
Why It Matters
A bronze sculpture by Vedder that combines classical contrapposto with fin-de-siecle melancholy, translating the dreamlike quality of his Rubaiyat illustrations into three-dimensional form during a period of late-career exploration across media.
