Villa Piccille - below Villa Uffreduzzi - Perugia

Elihu Vedder, a native New Yorker, lived in Italy for most of his career as part of a large group of American expatriate artists in late 19th-century Rome. A sensuous colorist and creator of brooding, melancholic images, Vedder often defies easy stylistic categorization. He showed an early interest in visionary and allegorical subjects of ancient history and mythology, yet also delighted in the depiction of pure landscape.

Beginning in 1871, Vedder and his wife Carrie spent several pleasant summers at Perugia, avoiding the unhealthy summer atmosphere of Rome. The inscription on the back of this painting identifies it as Villa Piccille, a house below Villa Uffreduzzi, where the Vedders stayed that first year. The deceptive simplicity and shimmering coloration of this tiny scene call to mind the works of the American painter George Inness, who was their neighbor.

The contents of Vedder's Roman studio remained in his daughter Anita's hands until the 1950s. She bequeathed a large number of these to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which distributed them to museums across the United States, including the Hudson River Museum.