Sanford Robinson Gifford

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Sanford Robinson Gifford bigraphy, stories - American artist

Sanford Robinson Gifford : biography

July 10, 1823 – August 29, 1880

Sanford Robinson Gifford (July 10, 1823 – August 29, 1880) was an American landscape painter and one of the leading members of the Hudson River School. Gifford’s landscapes are known for their emphasis on light and soft atmospheric effects, and he is regarded as a practitioner of Luminism, an offshoot style of the Hudson River School.

Not to be confused with artist Robert Swain Gifford (1840–1905), no apparent relation. Childs Gallery.

Gifford’s death

On August 29, 1880, Gifford died in New York City, having been diagnosed with malarial fever. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City celebrated his life that autumn with a memorial exhibition of 160 paintings. A catalog of his work published shortly after his death recorded in excess of 700 paintings during his career.

Between 1955 and 1973, Gifford’s heirs donated the artist’s collection of letters and personal papers to the Archives of American Art, a research center which is part of the Smithsonian Institution. In 2007, these papers were digitally scanned in their entirety and made available to researchers as the Sanford Robinson Gifford Papers Online.http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/giffsanf/index.cfm

Gifford’s travels

Like most Hudson River School artists, Gifford traveled extensively to find scenic landscapes to sketch and paint. In addition to exploring New England, upstate New York and New Jersey, Gifford made extensive trips abroad. He first traveled to Europe from 1855 to 1857, to study European art and sketch subjects for future paintings. During this trip Gifford also met and traveled extensively with Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge.

In 1858, he traveled to Vermont, "apparently" with his friend and fellow painter Jerome Thompson. Details of their visit were carried in the contemporary Home Journal. Both artists submitted paintings of Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s tallest peak, to the National Academy of Design’s annual show in 1859. (See "Mt. Mansfield paintings controversy" below.) ‘Thompson’s work, "Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain," is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,’ according to the report. by Mark Bushnell, Rutland [Vt.] Herald, January 11, 2009. Retrieved 1/13/09.

Thereafter, he served in the Union Army as a corporal in the 7th Regiment of the New York Militia upon the outbreak of the Civil War. A few of his canvases belonging to New York City’s Seventh Regiment and the Union League Club of New Yorkhttp://hamiltonauctiongalleries.com/Gifford-62.JPG are testament to that troubled time.

During the summer of 1867, Gifford spent most of his time painting on the New Jersey coast, specifically at Sandy Hook and Long Branch, according to an auction Web site. "The Mouth of the Shrewsbury River," one noted canvas from the period, is a dramatic scene depicting a series of telegraph poles extending into an atmospheric distance underneath ominous storm clouds.

Another journey, this time with Jervis McEntee and his wife, took him across Europe in 1868. Leaving the McEntees behind, Gifford traveled to the Middle East, including Egypt in 1869. Then in the summer of 1870 Gifford ventured to the Rocky Mountains in the western United States, this time with Worthington Whittredge and John Frederick Kensett. At least part of the 1870 travels were as part of a Hayden Expedition, led by Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden. Picture 1. Archive of American Art. Smithsonian Institution.

"Chief pictures"

Gifford referred to the best of his landscapes as his "chief pictures". Many of his chief pictures are characterized by a hazy atmosphere with soft, suffuse sunlight. Gifford often painted a large body of water in the foreground or middle distance, in which the distant landscape would be gently reflected. Examples of Gifford’s "chief pictures" in museum collections today include:

  • Lake Nemi (1856–57), Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
  • The Wilderness (1861), Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
  • A Passing Storm (1866), Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
  • Ruins of the Parthenon (1880), Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.