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Bound Angel

Elihu Vedder

American Art

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).
MEDIUM White chalk and black Conté crayon on bluish-green, moderately thick, slightly textured wove paper
DATES 1891
DIMENSIONS sheet: 11 1/2 × 8 7/8 in. (29.2 × 22.5 cm) frame: 20 3/8 × 15 3/8 × 1 3/4 in. (51.8 × 39.1 × 4.4 cm)  (show scale)
SIGNATURE Conjoined monogram and date lower right: "18 V 91"
COLLECTIONS American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 21.482
CREDIT LINE Bequest of William H. Herriman
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Elihu Vedder (American, 1836–1923). Bound Angel, 1891. White chalk and black Conté crayon on bluish-green, moderately thick, slightly textured wove paper, sheet: 11 1/2 × 8 7/8 in. (29.2 × 22.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of William H. Herriman, 21.482 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 21.482_PS4.jpg)
IMAGE overall, 21.482_PS4.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011
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