Elihu Vedder

Anita Vedder (the artist's daughter)
Mrs. John Breck, Stamford, Connecticut (by 1960)
Roy H. Passmore, Pelham, New York
Private Collection (by descent to the grandchildren of the above
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Regina Soria, Elihu Vedder:  American Visionary Artist in Rome (1836-1923), Rutherford, New Jersey, 1970, op. 311, no. 278

Canvas is backed by glass. SURFACE: in good condition; a small dark "drop" on top of surface, lower right corner UNDER ULTRA VIOLET: a few scattered spots, dots of inpaint--a couple at upper center in sky, another couple at centerjust under horizon; a few dots in shrubbery at lower right
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The Vedder family spent their summers and autumns from 1871-1880 in Perugia.  The Villa Ansidei was the second cottage they rented, from 1873-1880, the Villa Uffreduzzi being the first.  Both homes offered Vedder excellent views of the countryside and the sky, which informed and inspired his work.  As he wrote in his memoirs, from the Villa Uffreduzzi we saw the level plain of the Tiber stretching to stormy Assisi, always involved in clouds and strange effects and atmospheric troubles...Villa Ansidei had the same great view and the same cloud-effects over the plain...shown in many a sketch at the time, (Elihu Vedder, The Digressions of V:  Written for His Own Fun and That of His Friends, Boston, 1910, p.404). 
The present painting is notable for  the depiction of two characteristic devices found in a number of Vedder's works:  the sun (or moon), often depicted low in the sky and the atmospheric effect of smoke, here seen in the haze on the distant fields from the burning of stubble after the harvest.