Bound Angel

This highly finished preparatory study for a painting depicts a personification of the human soul in conflict as a female angel with bound hands and feet. Although Elihu Vedder rendered the figure’s idealized body as fettered and immobile, he suggested an active spiritual life through her attitude of contemplation, with head tilted back, eyes closed, and brow slightly furrowed.

Bound Angel exemplifies Vedder’s technical prowess as a draftsman, as well as his esoteric Symbolist subject matter. Symbolism emerged in turn-of-the-century literary and artistic circles as a movement that favored the exploration of emotional, spiritual, and imaginative themes over the representation of the real world (see also Kahlil Gibran’s drawing displayed nearby).