Artwork Title: Lair of the Sea Serpent

Lair of the Sea Serpent, 1899

Elihu Vedder

Artwork Title: Lair of the Sea SerpentArtwork Title: Lair of the Sea Serpent
In 1864 Vedder completed a large painting of a huge mythical creature burrowing into a hillock on a sandy shore. Now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, that painting was based on a sketch that Vedder reworked 35 years later to create this canvas. The sea serpent’s immense size, thick, coiled body, and incongruous placement in a tranquil setting suggest the influence on Vedder of nightmarish demons such as those portrayed by Gustave Doré and Francisco de Goya, especially in the latter’s aquatints published as Los Caprichos in 1799. [https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/13065] Against a quiet stretch of distant sea and sandy dunes the serpent glides, monstrous and ominous, shining as in some vivid dream. This combination, a desolate landscape depicted with literal exactitude and united with a sinister or strange image to create an atmosphere of isolation and fantasy, gives a singular force to much of his work[, with this painting exemplifying' his taste for the exotic. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/23207929?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents]
Uploaded on Feb 26, 2018 by Suzan Hamer

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