Art Institute of Chicago

The Sun Vow

Hermon Atkins MacNeil (American, 1866–1947)

Date

Modeled 1898, cast 1901

Medium

Bronze

Culture

United States

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

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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