Samson and Delilah

This 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.”