The Sun Vow

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

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.

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