TitleSamson and Delilah
Artist
Elihu Vedder
(1836 - 1923)
Dateca. 1886
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 5 × 9 1/4 in.
Framed: 12 1/4 × 15 × 1 1/4 in.
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Gift of the Elihu Vedder Estate, by distribution of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1955
Object number1552-P
Label TextThis small work is a preparatory study for a painting that was not carried further. Vedder also executed individual oil studies for each of the figures in Samson and Delilah. The art critic John Russell noted in The New York Times that in this work Vedder “took just a square inch or two to give us Samson fast asleep on his bed, the naked Delilah with her scissors still open in her hand, and the hint of a henchman just outside the door. No heaving and no puffing, but the essence of a tale often told yet rarely made so vivid.”
