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PROPERTY FROM A NEW YORK COLLECTION
Lot 73

Elihu Vedder
(1836-1923)
Off Pier Head, Viareggio, Italy 24 x 37 3/4in

18 May 2016, 14:00 EDT
New York

Sold for US$106,250 inc. premium

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Elihu Vedder (1836-1923)

Off Pier Head, Viareggio, Italy
signed, dated and inscribed 'Elihu Vedder / Roma 1881 / N.Y. -- 83' (lower right) and inscribed and dated again 'Rome - 86' (lower right)
oil on canvas
24 x 37 3/4in

Footnotes

Provenance
The artist.
Mrs. J.S. Cabot, Boston, Massachusetts, 1887.
The Farnolli Collection, Newport, Rhode Island, and Los Angeles, California.
Private collection, Massachusetts.
Private collection, Michigan.
Godel & Co. Fine Art, New York.
Private collection, Massachusetts.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2009.

Exhibited
Boston, Massachusetts, Williams and Everett, 1883, no. 8.
Boston, Massachusetts, Doll & Richards, 1887.
New York, Richard York Gallery, The Italian Presence in American Art: 1860-1920, November 17-December 29, 1989, p. 37, no. 47, illustrated.
New York, Questroyal Fine Art, Myth and Reality: Elihu Vedder and American Painters in Italy, May 10-31, 2012, n.p.

Literature
E. Vedder, The Digressions of V. Written for His Own Fun and That of His Friends, Boston, Massachusetts, 1910, p. 486.
R. Soria, Elihu Vedder - American Visionary Artist in Rome (1836-1923), Rutherford, New Jersey, 1970, p. 328, no. 405.
J. Hayward, The Italian Presence in American Art, 1860-1920, New York, 1989, p. 37, illustrated.

Elihu Vedder was one of America's greatest and most original expatriate artists. Vedder loved Italy and had homes in Rome and on the Isle of Capri. The late Joshua C. Taylor noted that "All of Vedder's landscapes are small, and many of them tiny" (J.C. Taylor, Perceptions and Evocations: The Art of Elihu Vedder, Washington, D.C., 1979, p. 94) and indeed a small 8x12 inch version of Off Pier Head, Viareggio, Italy does exist. However, there are a few pictures from Vedder's peripatetic and dynamic career that stand out as his iconic masterworks in terms of their exceptional quality, compelling subjects and large size. In this respect, Off Pier Head, Viareggio, Italy of 1881-1886 joins such paintings as The Questioner of the Sphinx, 1863 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts), The Lair of the Sea Serpent 1864 and 1889 (versions at both the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and The Cumaean Sibyl, 1876 (Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan) as a Vedder masterpiece. The importance of the present work is noted by every scholar of the artist's work and is included in Vedder's famous autobiographical The Digressions of V. published in Boston, Massachusetts in 1910 where he lists it as having been in the collection of Mrs. J. S. Cabot since 1887. Off Pier Head, Viareggio, Italy is Vedder's most animated and deeply felt marine subject.

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