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View at the museum ↗The Sun Vow
Hermon Atkins MacNeilModeled 1898, cast 1901
- Attribution
- Hermon Atkins MacNeil (American, 1866–1947) Cast by Roman Bronze Works (American, founded 1897)
- Medium
- Bronze
- Physical dimensions
- H.: 176.5 cm (69 1/2 in.)
- Credit line
- Bequest of Howard Van Doren Shaw
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Source rights statement: Public domain
View the museum record ↗From the museum
Sculptor Hermon Atkins MacNeil imagined a rite of manhood in this portrayal of a Native American elder guiding a boy as he shoots an arrow skyward. The pair follows its ascent until it is lost in the sun’s rays. It was through the distorted lens of ethnographic displays at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago as well as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows that MacNeil’s interest in Indigenous cultures developed. He modeled The Sun Vow apart from any meaningful contact with Native peoples, executing it in Rome in 1898. MacNeil’s study of classical sculptures in Italy is visible here in the attentive rendering of the human form and harmonious lines of the figures’ silhouettes.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0