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The Pleiades

Elihu Vedder American
1885
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 774
According to Greek mythology, the Pleiades were the seven daughters of Atlas and the nymph Pleione. Vedder first depicted the subject in his landmark artist’s book, “Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám” (1884), for which he produced fifty-six full-page visual “accompaniments” for Edward FitzGerald’s translation of the twelfth-century text. Linked to quatrains thirty-four through thirty-six, the figures in “The Pleiades” symbolically represent the horoscope of the astronomer-poet Khayyam—as the stars under whose ascendency he was born. Together they hold aloft a thread of light from which six stars glow; a seventh has escaped from a break in the thread. Vedder returned often to his “Rubáiyát” imagery for creative inspiration, producing related decorative designs and oil paintings including this work and its preparatory studies.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: The Pleiades
  • Artist: Elihu Vedder (American, New York 1836–1923 Rome)
  • Date: 1885
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 24 1/8 x 37 5/8 in. (61.3 x 95.6 cm)
  • Credit Line: Gift of George A. Hearn, 1910
  • Object Number: 10.64.13
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

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