Fine Paintings & Sculpture

417

416.

Elihu Vedder (American, 1836-1923)

Study for The Abundance of the Days of the Week,

Sunday, A Ceiling Panel from the Residence of Collis

P. Huntington, New York, c. 1893

Inscribed “Elihu Vedder” within the composition.

Pastel on paper, circular format, 8 1/4 x 8 1/8 in., framed.

Condition: Rippling, paper tape residue in corners, affixed

to backing mat in three corners.

N.B. Through architect George Post, Elihu Vedder

received a commission to create ceiling panels for the

home of Collis P. Huntington in New York in 1893.

Vedder was particularly pleased with the commission,

because it offered him a reason to decline a commission

for ceiling paintings at the World’s Columbian Exposition,

which he felt posed particular technical difficulty and

which would require his staying in Chicago to create on

site. While Vedder was reluctant to disappoint architect

Charles McKim, who had brought him to Chicago, Vedder

considered the Huntington commission to be the best

he had ever received. The ceiling for the Huntington

residence could be completed on canvas in Rome and

then brought to New York for installation.^1 The subject

for the Huntington commission was the “Abundance

of the Days of the Week,” with each day presented

using a corresponding god or goddess and planet. The

drawing at hand shows Apollo, who represented Sunday,

surrounded by the Four Seasons.^2 The finished painting,

which formed the central panel of the ceiling, is now in

the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, as are a

number of Vedder’s studies for the commission.

1. Elihu Vedder, The Digressions of V., written for his own fun and that
   of his friends by Elihu Vedder (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin
   Company, 1910), p. 490.


2. Joshua Charles Taylor, Jane Dillenberger, Richard Murray, Perceptions
   and Evocations: The Art of Elihu Vedder (Washington, D.C.: Published for
   the National Collection of Fine Arts by the Smithsonian Institution Press,
   1979), p. 207.
   $2,000-3,000

417.

Andre Jean Castaigne (French/American, 1861-1929)

Siege with a Battering Ram

Signed and dated “A. Castaigne 910” l.r.

Oil on canvas, 29 1/2 x 21 1/4 in. (74.9 x 54.0 cm),

framed.

Condition: Lined, retouch, craquelure, minor abrasions.

$1,500-2,500

online bidding at http://www.skinnerinc.com 83

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