Ideal Head

Artist Elihu Vedder (American, 1836 - 1923)

Date1872

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsOverall: 14 5/8 x 13 7/8 in. (37.1 x 35.2 cm), frame: 22 3/8 x 22 x 2 1/8 in. (56.8 x 55.9 x 5.4 cm)

Credit LineBequest of James R. and Barbara R. Palmer

Object number2019.118

Collections

American

ClassificationsPainting

Object NamePainting

DepartmentPermanent Collection

CultureNorth American

NationalityAmerican

On View

On view

Century

Nineteenth

More Information

Signedbottom right: Elihu Vedder / ROME / 1872

Exhibition HistoryAn American Place: Selections from the James and Barbara Palmer Collection, Palmer Museum of Art, January 29–May 1, 2022 An Intimate Eye: Selections from the Collection of James and Barbara Palmer, Palmer Museum of Art, January 18–May 15, 2005 Perceptions and Evocations: The Art of Elihu Vedder, National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, October 13, 1978–February 4, 1979; Brooklyn Museum, April 28–July 9, 1979ProvenanceFrances (Fanny) Lathrop Beebe Fiske [Mrs. George J. Fiske], Boston Dr. and Mrs. Mackinley Helm, Boston Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Preston Richardson, Detroit and Philadelphia Kennedy Galleries, New York Collection of James and Barbara Palmer, acquired in 1986 from Kennedy Galleries Palmer Museum of Art, bequest of James R. and Barbara R. Palmer, 2019Published ReferencesJoyce Henri Robinson, ed., A Gift From the Heart: American Art from the Collection of James and Barbara Palmer (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), 19 (fig. 11), 27n25, 207 (ill., color). An Intimate Eye (University Park, PA: Palmer Museum of Art, 2005), 15 (no. 71). Perceptions and Evocations: The Art of Elihu Vedder (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), 106 (ill., fig. 124). Regina Soria, Elihu Vedder: American Visionary Artist in Rome (1836–1923) (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970), 306 (no. 231), n.p. (ill., no. 28). Gerald Eager, “Fantastic Painting in America” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1969), 63–64. Isabel Stevenson Monro and Kate M. Monro, Index to Reproductions of American Paintings, First Supplement: A guide to pictures occurring in more than four hundred works (New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1964), 449. E. P. Richardson, A Short History of Painting in America: The Story of 450 Years (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 242 (ill., fig. 12–6), 243. E. P. Richardson, Painting in America From 1502 to the Present (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1965 [1956]), 298 (ill., fig. 140), 353. William H. Pierson Jr. and Martha Davidson, eds., Arts of the United States: A Pictorial Survey (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960; Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1966), 328 (ill., no. 2929). Elihu Vedder, The Digressions of V. Written for His Own Fun and That of His Friends (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910), appendix (A List of the Works of V. Sold Since the Year 1856): 472. Carrie [Mrs. Elihu] Vedder’s Sales Book. Mrs. G. J. Fiske, letter to Elihu Vedder, June 29, 1872.