1000 Museums

Elihu Vedder was an American painter and illustrator who worked in landscape and dreamlike paintings containing allegorical meaning. He was born in New York City on February 26, 1836. Much of his early education was rooted in New York City and Long Island; Vedder began drawing in his youth and in 1851 began learning under a drawing master. He sold his first painting at the age of nineteen. He set sail for Paris in 1856 and studied there until 1861 when he returned to the United States. Vedder worked for a while as a valentine cartoonist and an illustrator for Vanity Fair but ultimately decided to return to Europe and permanently settled in Rome in 1861. Vedder believed that art was a homeland, and painted very much from his imagination and dreams. Italy was the closest he found he could come to this homeland. Vedder’s work also expressed a preoccupation with death and a vibrant intellectualism. He was friends with many writers, thinkers, and fellow artists. Vedder did many commissioned murals and illustrated books over the course of his lifetime. He died in 1923.