Feb

“Sun Vow” ~~ MacNeil Month 2020 ~ “They’re Still There!”

By Dan Neil Leininger, Webmaster

MacNeil’s “Sun Vow” is “Still There”

in NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1919.

The “Sun Vow” became a theme here at HermonAtkinsMacNeil.com on several occasions.

In November, I received an email and Photos from my daughter and grandson as they visited New York City.

Rachel and Owen Schweers visiting “The Sun Vow” in NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

New York City ~~ Metropolitan Museum of Art My daughter and grandson texted the following:

“Hey Grampa, Look what we found!”

Owen Schweers at Hermon MacNeil’s “Sun Vow”.

Here’s some 2019 Photos of the MMA with Rachel and Owen Schweers on a New York City excursion in November.

Here is the Museum’s own description of this MacNeil piece:

“By the 1890s, sculptural representations of Native American and Western themes had become extremely popular. While living in Chicago in the early 1890s, MacNeil had learned of a rite of passage that captured his imagination: before a boy on the threshold of manhood could be accepted as a warrior, he was required to shoot an arrow directly into the sun. If the chieftain judging the boy’s prowess was so blinded by the sun’s rays that he could not follow the flight of the arrow, it was said to have gone “out of sight,” and the youth had passed the test. MacNeil portrayed the dramatic moment following the arrow’s release, heightening both the visual impact of the composition and the sense of narrative suspense.”

The Sun Vow

Working Title/Artist: The Sun Vow
Department: Am. Paintings / Sculpture
Culture/Period/Location:
HB/TOA Date Code:
Working Date: 1919
scanned for collections

Artist: Hermon Atkins MacNeil (American, Everett, Massachusetts 1866–1947 Queens, New York). Date: 1899, cast 1919. Culture: American. Medium: Bronze. Dimensions: 72 x 32 1/2 x 54 in. (182.9 x 82.6 x 137.2 cm). Classification: Sculpture

Native Perspective: from MMA. Hermon Atkins MacNeil, Sun Vow

Hermon Atkins MacNeil (American, 1866–1947). The Sun Vow, 1899, cast 1919. Bronze, 72 x 32 1/2 x 54 in. (182.9 x 82.6 x 137.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Rogers Fund, 1919 (19.126). On view in gallery 700.

How will MacNeil’s story end? The figures are suspended, held captive by a vow that the artist later admitted he perhaps made up. This representation of the futility of Indian action fosters a belief in their aimlessness. Where will the arrow land? It cannot. Ineffective and undirected, it must disappear. This reinforces a limited vision of Native success in which the youth, the next generation, must move beyond the blinded elder. In a celebration of naivety, the child smiles slightly at the release of the powerless arrow, contributing to the acknowledgment of landless future generations—of Natives forcibly separated from their territories, and from themselves. This depiction participates in a ritual of blindness to a civilizing violence understood as necessary.

—Jackson Polys (Tlingit)

Credit: Met Museum of Art; NYC: https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/curatorial-departments/the-american-wing/native-perspectives ]

We observe each February as MacNeil Month here on HAM.

“They’re Still There!” celebrates several re-visits and discoveries of MacNeil works made in 2019.

Why do this in February? Two reasons:

February 27 is the anniversary of the birth of Hermon A. MacNeil, born in 1866, of one-hundred and fifty-four years ago. Hermon is the patron-sculptor whose work and life are celebrated at this website – HermonAtkinsMacNeil.com.
February 29 is the Anniversary of the birth of Thomas (Tom) Henry McNeil (my grandfather) born in 1860, one-hundred and sixty years ago. Tom told his daughters to address “Hermon” as “Uncle Hermon.” “Uncle” was the title of respect bestowed on their first-cousin-twice-removed.