- his catalog, published to accompany an published to accompany his catalog, notable of more than forty exhibition Robinson Gifford paintings by Sanford The works in the exhibition, beautifully repro- The works in the exhibition, beautifully essay contributed the catalog’s Kevin J. Avery at Michael Altman Fine Art, provides an intimate at Michael Altman further proof and offers depiction of the artist by many to be the most as to why he is known painter of the nineteenth accomplished luminist are para- The works in the exhibition century. skill and technical the artist’s mount examples of he made of his of the exquisite representations lies in his ability to forte surroundings. Gifford’s whether capture the moment in its magnificence, or Valley it is the dawn breaking over the Hudson just before sunset. a canal in Venice are pictures that pages, duced in the catalog’s over the Michael Altman has acquired and sold extraor past twenty-five years. During this time, skill have passed dinary examples of Gifford’s apprecia- through his hands, fostering a love and you today. tion for the artist, which he shares with are Among the works shown in this exhibition public the by seen been ever hardly have that ten San- of Dr. and come directly from the collection the great-grandnephew of the artist. ford Gifford, important sketches, there are some Additionally, from intimate studies, and major masterpieces rarely private collections, many of which have been exhibited. and conveyed his considerable expertise to the publication as a whole, and Donald J. Christensen composed the biographical sketch and timeline; each writer brought to the project a deep appre- There has ciation of Sanford Robinson Gifford. been no attempt here to recreate a retrospective, so magnificently done in past years by the Metro- Avery), (Kevin York New Art, Museum of politan and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Franklin Kelly). Our only goal was to show most that privately held paintings best the of some vision of nature and our Gifford’s accurately offer wilderness. treasured nation’s T

Paintings by A DEALER’S ADMIRATION A DEALER’S AN ARTIST’S LEGACY AND AND LEGACY AN ARTIST’S from Important American Collections from Important American Sanford Robinson Gifford Robinson Sanford

AN ARTIST’S LEGACY AND MICHAEL ALTMAN FINE ART A DEALER’S ADMIRATION & ADVISORY SERVICES, LLC - DONALD

: is a fine-art dealer who special- dealer is a fine-art knew little about the landscape of American Drawings and Watercolors American Drawings and Watercolors is a senior research scholar and a for is a senior research scholar illustration

izes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American American and twentieth-century izes in nineteenth- years he has For more than twenty-five paintings. collectors and public institu- advised both private enriching their collections. His tions in building and private townhouse on Manhat- gallery is located in a Side. Upper East tan’s mer associate curator at the Metropolitan Museum mer associate curator professor in the art depart- of Art and an adjunct City University of New ment of Hunter College, from received his B.A. in art history Avery Dr. York. degrees Fordham University and his M.A. and Ph.D. where he wrote his dis- from Columbia University, in sertation on the panorama and its manifestations author of American landscape painting. He is the Edwin Olana: Landscapes by Frederic from Treasures the Church, the catalog of an exhibition that toured Dr. Franklin Kelly, United States in 2005–7. With and prepared the catalog for Hud- organized Avery Sanford Landscapes of The Visions: River School son , exhibited in 2003–4 at the Metropoli- R. Gifford the Amon Carter tan Museum of Art in New York, and the National Gal- Texas, Museum in Fort Worth, In 2002 he edited D.C. lery of Art in Washington, and coauthored I; and has in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume Alexis written or contributed essays to the catalogs (2010); Art and the Rockman: A Fable for Tomorrow 1825–1861 (2000), American City: New York, Empire The Heart of Picture: Great (1997), Church’s Tonalism of the Andes (1993), and American Paradise: The World Avery Dr. (1987). Currently, School River Hudson the River of the Hudson history on a narrative is working School, to be published in 2014. analyst, Wall Street and writer A financial jacket 1878 , Twilight A Venetian Sanford Robinson Gifford, MICHAEL ALTMAN MICHAEL KEVIN J. AVERY J. CHRISTENSEN the Hudson Valley or the nineteenth-century artists or the the Hudson Valley bought a house he before splendor its recorded who in 1985 that overlooked Mount Merino, a favorite and many other landscape subject of Sanford Gifford hometown of Hudson, New artists, near Gifford’s exam- skills to his research turned Christensen York. and his ining the lives and motivations of Gifford contemporaries and along the way gained an affinity and respect for the wonders and fragility of nature. An Artist’s Legacy and A Dealer’s Admiration

Paintings by Sanford Robinson Gifford

from Important American Collections

Essays by Kevin j. avery Donald j. Christensen

michael altman fine art & advisory services, llc new york city This exhibition is dedicated to Dr. Sanford Robinson Gifford, the great-grandnephew of the artist, and to the many collectors who have shared my passion and vision for America’s greatest luminist painter. michael n. altman

Contents

Foreword 9 Michael N. Altman

Origins of the Collection 11 sanford robinson gifford, m.d.

Catalog 13

The Enchantment of Sanford Gifford 103 Kevin j. Avery

Sanford Robinson Gifford: A Biographical Sketch 135

A loan exhibition organized by Donald j. Christensen Michael Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services, LLC Notes 142 exhibited at Michael Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services A Brief Chronology 146 38 East 70th Street, New York City Donald j. Christensen October 12–December 14, 2012 Exhibition Checklist 148

Index of Works Reproduced 150 Foreword michael n. altman

can never thank emphatically enough the collectors ers genre, portraiture, and landscape. With its depictions who have so generously lent to An Artist’s Legacy and of the artist’s native Hudson Valley and exotic locales IA Dealer’s Admiration: Paintings by Sanford Robinson abroad, this body of work is representative of Gifford’s Gifford from Important American Collections. Such loans spirit of adventure. are the foundation for the success of any show, and this There are several special collectors whom I would like one is no exception. to thank for lending more than one object to our exhibi- In my career I consider myself fortunate to have had tion. These passionate connoisseurs have been inspired the pleasure and privilege of handling most of the paint- by the depth and range of Gifford’s body of work, and ings exhibited here, and it all began with my recogni- have pursued and acquired numerous examples by this tion of and profound respect for the artist. In my opinion wonderful artist. Discretion requires that I stay quiet, Gifford is the greatest nineteenth-century American but I extend my great thanks to those who were willing luminist artist and perhaps the most technically accom- to share multiple examples. plished as well. Finally, it is this extraordinary gathering of paint- In addition to all of the Gifford paintings that I have ings and drawings by Gifford, including a few that have acquired and sold, there has always been a tiny treasure rarely been seen, that will be interesting and informative trove of paintings tucked away in a cottage in Cambridge, for the market. Among the Hudson River School artists, Massachusetts, in the collection of Dr. Sanford Gifford, Gifford may be the best of those who preferred to paint the great-grandnephew and namesake of the artist. Over on a small scale. It is often in these modest images that the last seven years Dr. Gifford has entrusted this group he most effectively captures the beauty and the grandeur to me to restore and preserve, and it has been our mutual of nature. goal to exhibit them one day. I am proud that the col- Very few people have ever seen the group of works laboration has become a reality and that this catalog and so generously lent by Dr. Gifford, and fewer still after exhibition have been realized. Dr. Gifford’s paintings they have been framed expertly by Eli Wilner & Co. and have descended through or been acquired by his family, gently and ably restored by the masterful Simon Parkes. and with the exception of three works, his unique collec- I am a firm believer in the proper preservation of paint- tion remains intact. This is a fascinating group that cov- ings with as little intervention as possible.

9 Origins of the Collection sanford robinson gifford, m.d.

In addition, there is the marvelous, forty-two-inch have been possible. I owe my sincere appreciation to ost of the Sanford Robinson Gifford paint- Poughkeepsie, New York, her nephew Charles Maurice, Italian view, A Venetian Twilight, cleaned once after hav- Robyn Borgelt, Kate Thompson, and Caitlin Parker for ings in my possession were collected by my of New York City, and cousin, Kate Gifford, of River- ing not been seen for more than one hundred years, their tireless efforts in pursuit of perfection in the pre- Mmother, Alice Carter Gifford. She was born dale, California. and an exceptional, virtual pendant of the same size that sentation of this marvelous group of paintings by San- in Omaha, Nebraska, where she met and married my My mother kept the group of recovered pictures depicts the Hudson River, A Sunset on the Hudson; aston- ford Robinson Gifford. father, Sanford Robinson Gifford, who had been named together when she moved from Chicago to San Fran- ishingly, each has survived in nearly pristine condition, We are proud to present Gifford in such a compelling after his great-uncle, the Hudson River School painter. cisco to Santa Barbara, where she died in 1979. In the despite traveling across the decades, continents apart. way, with these exceptional examples of his work. And My father’s grandfather, Charles, had emigrated from 1950s she published a mini-catalog with the help of Stu- Many of the other paintings traveled through time through the scholarship of Kevin J. Avery and the origi- Hudson, New York, to Milwaukee in 1848. Though my art P. Feld, of Hirschl & Adler Galleries in New York. only to end up in wonderful collections, where most will nal prose contributed by him and Donald J. Christensen, mother was a Gifford only by marriage, she was an inde- When I inherited the collection after her death, I added likely remain as legacies to the period, the artist, and to we will undoubtedly learn a tremendous amount about fatigable researcher of Gifford family history, compiling the large self-portrait of November 1857 (see plate 2), the pristine American landscape so skillfully conveyed by Sanford Gifford, the artist and the man. meticulous genealogical tables going back to the seven- which was given to me by Edith Wilkinson. I bought at this insightful and timeless artist. I am grateful for this opportunity, so graciously teenth century. She applied the same energy to locating an auction the night scene of St. Mark’s, in Venice (see I would like to acknowledge my longtime and dedi- afforded to me by the several collectors who were so kind and obtaining Gifford paintings, a collection begun— plate 34), with the help of Professor Theodore Stebbins cated partners at Michael Altman Fine Art & Advisory to lend their paintings. Without them and their gener- as I recall from high school days—with a small, rolled- of the Fogg Museum, Harvard University. The most Services, LLC, with whom I have the pleasure to work. ous cooperation, neither the catalog nor the exhibition up oil sketch that had turned up in the attic of one unusual painting, the interior with an open window of Without them neither this catalog nor exhibition would would have been possible. of my father’s medical colleagues. Unrolled and Sanford Gifford’s New York apartment (see Twilight, restored, this became Hook Mountain, near Nyack, New plate 44), was bequeathed to me by my cousin Charles York (see plate 31). Other paintings were scattered Maurice. among branches of the family that were rarely, if ever, Of my mother’s original collection, I have sold a in touch with each other. My mother traced these fam- painting of Lake George and donated two Catskill ily connections and became close friends with some of sketches, featuring Kauterskill Clove (see plates 12 and our relatives, including my cousin Edith Wilkinson, of 14), to the Fogg Museum.

10 11 Catalog

12 1 Double Self-Portrait, June 1853

Pencil on paper 5 × 7¼ in. Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts

14 15 2 Self-Portrait, November 1857

Oil on canvas 30 × 25 in. Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts

16 3 Sunset in the Wilderness with Approaching Rain, ca. 1852–53

Oil on canvas 7¼ × 11¼ in. Private collection

18 19 4 A Moment’s Rest, ca. 1854–55

Oil on canvas 8⅝ × 15 in. Private collection

20 21 5 Marina Grande, Capri, 1857

Oil on canvas 4⅞ × 4⅞ in. Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts

22 23 6 Mansfield Mountain, Vermont, 1859

Oil on canvas 30½ × 60¼ in. Private collection

24 25 7 Mount Mansfield, 1859

Oil on canvas 10½ × 20 in. Private collection

26 27 8 Camping for the Night on Mansfield Mountain, early 1860s

Oil on canvas 10 × 16½ in. Private collection

28 9 Lake George, 1860

Oil on canvas 10⅝ × 20⅛ in. Private collection

30 31 10 A Sketch in the Wilderness, ca. 1860–61

Oil on canvas 8½ × 15¾ in. Private collection

32 33 11 A Lake in the Wilderness at Sunset, 1861

Oil on canvas 9 × 14 in. Private collection

34 35 12 A Sketch in Kauterskill Clove, ca. 1861

Oil on canvas 13¼ × 11¼ in. Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts Gift of Sanford Gifford, M.D. inv. 2005.188

36 13 A Sketch of Winter Twilight, 1862

Oil on canvas 8 × 16 in. Private collection

38 39 14 A Ledge on South Mountain, in the Catskills, ca. 1862

Oil on canvas 13⅜ × 10⅛ in. Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts Gift of Sanford Gifford, M.D. inv. 2006.1

40 15 Kauterskill Clove, in the Catskills, 1862

Oil on canvas 13 × 11 in. Private collection

42 16 A Study of Kauterskill Clove, 1862

Oil on canvas 11 × 9 in. Private collection

44 17 The Catskill Mountain House, 1862

Oil on canvas 10 × 18½ in. Private collection

46 47 18 Claverack Creek, 1862

Oil on canvas 11¼ × 19¼ in. Private collection

48 49 19 A Coming Storm on Lake George, ca. 1863

Oil on canvas 10 × 18 in. Private collection

50 20 Storm King on the Hudson, ca. 1863

Oil on paper laid on canvas 7 × 10 in. Private collection

52 53 21 Mount Chocorua, New Hampshire, 1863

Oil on canvas 18 × 30 in. Private collection

54 55 22 Twilight in the Adirondacks, ca. 1864

Oil on canvas 10½ × 18 in. Private collection

56 23 Long Branch, 1864

Oil on canvas 11 × 19 in. Private collection

58 59 24 A Sketch of the Beach at Manchester, Massachusetts, 1864

Oil on canvas 10¼ × 19¼ in. Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts

60 61 25 A Sketch from North Mountain, in the Catskills, October 3, 1865

Oil on canvas 9¾ × 18⅞ in. Private collection

62 63 26 A Ledge in the Catskills, ca. 1865

Oil on canvas 13¼ × 11 in. Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts

64 27 A Coming Shower, A Sketch, ca. 1865–67

Oil study on canvas 5⅞ × 9 in. Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts

66 67 28 A Home in the Wilderness, A Sketch, 1865–67

Oil on canvas 9 × 15 in. Private collection

68 69 29 Echo Lake, Franconia Notch, ca. 1866

Oil on canvas 12 × 10 in. Private collection

70 71 30 Hook Mountain on the Hudson River, 1867

Oil on canvas 12⅝ × 10⅞ in. Private collection

72 31 Hook Mountain, near Nyack, New York, 1867

Oil on canvas 16 × 14 in. Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts

74 32 Mount Etna from Catania, 1868

Oil on canvas 8 × 13⅝ in. Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts

76 77 33 Siout, Egypt, 1869

Oil on canvas 8½ × 15⅝ in. Private collection

78 79 34 The Column of St. Mark’s, Venice, 1870

Oil on canvas 26 × 21½ in. Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts

80 35 The Statues of Memnon at Thebes, ca. 1872–78

Oil on canvas 22½ × 18 in. Private collection

82 36 Coming Rain on Lake George, A Sketch, 1873

Oil on canvas 11 × 19¾ in. Private collection

84 85 37 The Traps, Shawangunk Mountains, New York, A Sketch, ca. 1875

Oil on paperboard 4¼ × 8¼ in. Private collection

86 87 38 A Sunset on the Hudson, 1876–79

Oil on canvas 23⅛ × 42⅜ in. Private collection

88 89 39 An Indian Summer’s Day on Claverack Creek, 1877–79

Oil on canvas 30 × 24 in. Private collection

90 40 A Sketch of Clay Bluffs on No Man’s Land, 1877

Oil on canvas 9¼ × 16¼ in. Private collection

92 93 41 A Twilight Sketch in Venice, ca. 1878

Oil on board 7 × 11½ in. Private collection

94 95 42 A Venetian Twilight, 1878

Oil on canvas 9 × 16 in. Private collection

96 97 43 A Venetian Twilight, 1878

Oil on canvas 23½ × 42 in. Private collection

98 44 Twilight, 1880

Oil on canvas 15 × 9½ in. Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts

100 The Enchantment of Sanford Gifford kevin j. avery

n the mid-1970s the Metropolitan Museum’s collection of historical American paintings lacked galleries they could call their own and Iwere accorded contingent space in what today are the galleries of Chinese landscape painting. Just four works from that limited display still glimmer in memory: Emanuel Leutze’s unforgettable Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851), Frederic Church’s Heart of the Andes (fig. 2) and Cotopaxi (then on loan to the Metropolitan, fig. 3), and San- ford Gifford’s A Gorge in the Mountains (fig. 1), then known by the title Kauterskill Clove. I recall tracking my eyes in wonder across each of the two Church landscapes, taking in the sheer number of features (in pic- tures, respectively, ten and seven feet wide), my gaze borne along by the brooding lateral push of clouds or smoke that animated both, especially Cotopaxi, which portrays the still-active Ecuadorean volcano. But the painting by Gifford, of whom I then had only a dim aware- ness, was something else. For starters, it was vertical, and perhaps a third the size of the Church landscapes. Compared to them, it con- tained virtually nothing: a vast, chalice-like space shaped by two cascad- ing walls of forest and a valley floor with a pond, over all of which a vaporous sun seemed not so much to be setting as abiding—an Apollo reluctant to leave his domain. In the windowless gallery the image gave back the overhead lamplight as if it were generating it and augmenting fig. 1 sanford Robinson Gifford, A Gorge in the Mountains (Kauterskill Clove), 1862. Oil on its warmth. The painting seemed irresistible, its imagery instilling the canvas, 48 × 39⅞ in. elusive sense of simultaneous expansion and absorption, beckoning and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Bequest retreat, familiarity and remoteness. Only years later would I discover, of Maria DeWitt Jesup, from the collection of her husband, Morris K. Jesup, 1914, inv. 15.30.62. with little surprise, that Gifford’s Gorge in the Mountains—indeed, most

103 of his work—had elicited similar responses from viewers since the Civil above at the National Academy of Design (which Durand led from 1845 to War era in which they were painted. As early as 1861, four years into fig. 2 frederic Edwin Church, The Heart of 1860), the Century Club (founded in 1847), and the Tenth Street Studio the Andes, 1859. Oil on canvas, 66⅛ × 119¼ in. the artist’s mature career, Eugene Benson (1839–1908), a painter him- Building (opened in 1858), where Gifford was among the first tenants. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Bequest self and an emerging critical champion of Gifford, characterized the of Margaret E. Dows, 1909, inv. 09.95. One of his eulogists wrote of Gifford, “Next to Frederick [sic] E. expressive tensions in Gifford’s landscapes as “American in character; opposite Church, he was the most successful member of the Thomas Cole school Oriental in feeling.”1 That assessment still rings true. Despite differ- fig. 3 frederic Edwin Church, Cotopaxi, 1862. of American landscapists,” an assessment confirmed by the retrospec- ences in media and chromatics, in A Gorge in the Mountains the delicate, Oil on canvas, 48 × 85 in. tive of his work mounted at the Metropolitan (the first such accorded Detroit Institute of Arts. Founders Society Purchase. misty gray Asian landscapes that eventually replaced it in the second- any single artist by the institution) after his death in 1880, as well as the floor north galleries of the Metropolitan had a just precedent. simultaneous publication, also by the Metropolitan, of a catalog of 739 Before the emergence and eventual dominance of George Inness of his known paintings.2 Gifford undoubtedly had a contender to this (1825–1894) around the time of the American centennial, none of the status in John Frederick Kensett (1816–1872), who had passed away just New York landscape painters of what would later be called the Hud- eight years earlier and whose success had been exemplified in his being son River School inspired the label “poet” as often as Gifford. Unlike named a founding trustee of the museum. (Gifford was also a founder, Inness, socially and stylistically Gifford was unequivocally one with the but not a trustee.) In fact, that same eulogist linked the two artists as par body of artists who followed ardently in the footsteps of Thomas Cole nobile fratrum (as historians had paired, for example, the Revolutionary (1801–1848) and Asher B. Durand (1796–1886). Cole and Durand were, War heroes George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette), citing respectively, the founder and the leader of the landscape movement Gifford and Kensett for their “simplicity, gentleness, generosity, and established in New York City in the previous generation and centered sincerity,” which were deemed as visible in their art as in their persons.3

104 105 Yet for all the luminosity and discretion in Kensett’s landscapes, few observers attributed to him the poetic impulse they perceived in Gif- ford. And for all the discretion and restraint in Gifford’s own work, it bore an inflection that, while not necessarily making it any better or worse, transcended Kensett’s almost ascetic “good taste” (what nine- teenth-century critics were fond of terming “keeping”). Technically and stylistically, that inflection was embodied principally in the synthesis above of two features. The first was colored light.B oth Gifford and Kensett fig. 4 john Frederick Kensett, Lake George, were supremely sensitive to daylight and its translation into paint. But 1869. Oil on canvas, 44⅛ × 66⅜ in. compared to Kensett’s coloristic conservatism, which tended to a neu- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Bequest of Maria DeWitt Jesup, from the collection of her tral or even a cool palette (see fig. 4),G ifford’s inclination was toward husband, Morris K. Jesup, 1914, inv. 15.30.61. chromatic saturation and warmth. Often, as in Kauterskill Clove, in the right Catskills (fig. 5, plate 15), a study forA Gorge in the Mountains (fig. 1), fig. 5 sanford Robinson Gifford, Kauterskill that warmth was physically embodied in the visible presence of the sun Clove, in the Catskills, 1862 (plate 15) itself, a feature uncommon in Kensett’s paintings. The second feature, at least as critical to Gifford’s distinctiveness, was an almost tangible atmosphere, achieved by applying admixtures of white pigment and var- nish layers to local color, that at once muted and scattered colored light throughout the picture space, diaphanously veiling middle and distant terrain. Frequently, as shown again in Kauterskill Clove, in the Catskills, the artist preferred landscapes distinctive for their unobtrusive or even negative terrain—valleys, gorges, cloves—wherein the sun and the dif- fused aerial light bid for primacy as the subject of the picture, and all terrestrial forms yield to them as if awed subjects of the immaterial. The prominence of atmosphere in Gifford’s mature pictures points up another contrast with those of his colleague Kensett: Gifford’s indul-

106 107 gence, even outright accentuation, of deep space, an absorption into the picture plane abetted by the placement of small but distinct focal points, above such as, in Kauterskill Clove, in the Catskills, the glint of the waterfall’s fig. 6 sanford Robinson Gifford, Double Self-Portrait, June 1853 (plate 1) crest and of the creek’s winding surface on the plain beyond. In this right tension of the distant yet barely perceptible, promoting a state between fig. 7 sanford Robinson Gifford, Self-Portrait, dreaming and consciousness, lies the source of enchantment in Gifford’s November 1857 (plate 2) best paintings. His friend and colleague John Ferguson Weir (1841– 1926) aptly expressed the effect when he characterized the artist’s work as “a lucid reminiscence, a passional and poetic form of art that kindles go to New York to study figure painting in prospectof painting portraits emotion or moves one to reverie.” 4 for a living.7 The young man mastered human form quite ably, as is So how did Gifford, in contrast to most of his Hudson River School shown in the solemn Double Self-Portrait (fig. 6, plate 1) and Self-Portrait colleagues, arrive at his poetry? Perhaps, primarily, he was accorded a (fig. 7, plate 2), both in this exhibition, and even in many of the tiniest developmental latitude not granted to most of his contemporaries. He of the figures populating his landscapes. But, as both the scenic prints was the fourth of eleven children of a prosperous iron founder and bank on which Gifford had been weaned at home and the path that Cole’s president in Hudson, New York, and an indulgent, charitable mother. success had charted for so many aspiring painters virtually dictated, Gif- Both parents gave their older sons, at least, the relative freedom to pur- ford gravitated quickly to landscape. In 1845 and 1846, almost concur- sue inclinations to the arts rather than steer them into business.5 When rently with the period when the teenage Frederic Church (1826–1900) in 1874 Gifford supplied notes on his life to a would-be biographer, he sketched with his teacher, Cole, in the Catskills and Berkshires, Gifford cited first “the miscellaneous collection of engravings which covered worked there, too. As early as 1851, Gifford had earned enough distinc- the walls” of his oldest brother Charles’s room as his earliest stimulus tion for his entries into the annual exhibitions of the National Academy to becoming a painter.6 Charles eventually (if not successfully) ventured of Design to gain associate membership in the body. In 1854, the year into landscape gardening; Sanford, after dropping out of Brown Uni- he was elected an academician, Gifford was among several young art- versity during his second year and, reportedly, contemplating one day ists working in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, on the eve the nearby Catskill Mountains that overlooked the home of Thomas of that locale becoming a mecca of pleinairism. By that time his sea- Cole, the principal model for the younger generation of landscape art- sonal sketching campaigns had taken him also to Lake George and the ists who would follow him, earned his parents’ blessing and support to Adirondacks, Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley and Susquehanna River,

108 109 Cape May in New Jersey, and, in autumn 1854, to Maine.8 Though Sun- left he was not unlike other American artists (Cole had even met Turner set in the Wilderness with Approaching Rain (fig. 8, plate 3) andA Moment’s fig. 8 sanford Robinson Gifford, Sunset in 1829), but Gifford also dearly sought and gained an audience with in the Wilderness with Approaching Rain, Rest (fig. 9, plate 4) are undated, they are probably among the small oils ca. 1852–53 (plate 3) Turner’s champion, John Ruskin (1819–1900), at his home at Denmark Gifford began painting outdoors (or from memory soon after) during Hill, London, in late September 1855.9 Though Gifford had gradually center his formative years as a landscapist. Neither, tellingly, is conspicuous for fig. 9 sanford Robinson Gifford, A Moment’s become enthralled with the “varied brilliancy of color” and “great infin- the scrim of atmosphere that Gifford had already begun imposing in Rest, ca. 1854–55 (plate 4) ity as well as indefiniteness” he saw in Turner’s late paintings (see fig. 10), several of the landscapes he exhibited in the early 1850s. But then one right he had, like many American artists, at first sight of the actual paintings wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be, since Gifford only gradually fig. 10 joseph Mallord William Turner, objected to “the liberties that Turner so frequently took with the scenes The Golden Bough, 1834. Oil on canvas, 10 cultivated his aerial effects beyond what he actually observed. Sunset in 41 × 64½ in. he portrayed,” and told Ruskin so. The critic, who had with appar- the Wilderness with Approaching Rain in particular exemplifies the pursuit Tate Gallery, London, Great Britain. ent license already based a whole aesthetic program of absolute “truth of dramatic sunset and twilight effects that Gifford shared with several to nature” on the model of Turner, told Gifford that, for all Turner’s younger landscape painters, especially Church, around mid-century. devotion to the visible world, he “treated his subject as a poet, and not Perhaps a key to Gifford’s distinction among his colleagues was that as a topographer; that he painted the impression the scene made upon his painting matured in Europe, the wellspring of Western art, and his mind, rather than literal scenes.”11 The young painter undoubtedly especially in England, which fostered the age of landscape painting took Ruskin’s words to heart. Though Gifford’s earnest, sometimes that culminated in the work of the visionary Joseph Mallord William even grave nature could never have shed the academic proprieties of his Turner (1775–1851) and spawned the movement in America. Though training in New York, he seized the idea of the painter as poet and the Gifford gloried in roving the Continent on foot, sightseeing and sketch- primacy of the impression made by the subject, however compelling its ing his way through France, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy material parts might be. Moreover, as Turner’s works helped teach him, from 1855 to 1857, on his initial tour of England he focused on seeing especially in landscape there was no impression independent of the light Turner’s pictures—a few of which he had previewed in the prints in and air that both shaped and modified form. And manipulating form his brother’s collection—in London’s National Gallery. In that pursuit, could transfigure it, transcending the mere earthly.

110 111 fig. 11 sanford Robinson Gifford, Lake Nemi, 1856–57. Oil on canvas, 39⅝ × 60⅜ in. Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio. Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, inv. 1957.46.

In Rome, scarcely more than a year after his meet- ing with Ruskin, Gifford painted Lake Nemi (fig. 11), the largest picture he ever made and—with its vis- ible sun hovering over the filmy void of the volcanic basin—the picture that determined the essence of the aesthetic he would apply to so much of his out- put. Five years later, in Kaaterskill Clove (which he spelled “Kauterskill”), just a few miles across the river from his family home in Hudson, Gifford interpreted the ideal American counterpart to the chalice of light he had fashioned of Nemi (see fig. 1, fig. 5/plate 15, and plates 12 and 16). But Gifford also brought the sensibility to bear on New England vales and lakes (see plates 6, 9, and 11), upstate creeks (see plate 18), the Atlantic Ocean (see plate 23), the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas, and even, no less aptly, the Orient, after he visited the Middle East, including Egypt (see fig. 20, plate 33).

112 113 raits in Gifford’s personality coalesced with the cultural ethos of in the Catskills was almost like being there myself—they some- This times to dispose him to the expressive resolution that he had how make me think that I have a right to be there . . . climb- arrived at by the Civil War. Though he sought and gained the soci- ing with you . . . among the Cloves of the Catskills, but when ety of his artist-colleagues in New York and, in summer, in the field, under the hallucination I go to the gate of the Fort [Federal Hill, he was marked for his dignified reserve and independence. His friend Baltimore] and am rudely roused from my dreams by the sen- Worthington Whittredge (1820–1910) recalled that Gifford generally try sharply bringing his musket to “arms port”! and an abrupt came and went from his rooms in the Tenth Street Studio Building, “Halt”! . . . I find myself obliged to right-about, and limit my even on long trips, without notice.12 John Ferguson Weir, another close walk to the busy-idle crowd in the quarters.16 colleague, detected “cavernous depths of shade” in the artist’s charac- ter that belied, but also informed, the prevailing sunniness of his art, Whereas certain landscape artists, such as Church and Albert Bier- and an early Gifford admirer discerned even a “dangerous mania in stadt (1830–1902), extended a brand of the heroic sublime established his dark eyes.”13 In his own occasional testimony Gifford disclosed the by Cole, and in so doing exemplified in landscape American manifest depression to which he was sometimes subject, an affliction that he evi- destiny and Union triumphalism through the Civil War era, the soldier dently shared with his older brother Charles, who was treated for severe Gifford nursed his “dreams” and “hallucinations” of cherished resorts manic depression in New York in 1859 and died from an overdose of (including, in his reference above, the place that had stimulated the the sedative chloral hydrate in May 1861.14 In landscape, then, and in paintings that originally made Cole famous). Gifford’s steady commis- his expression of it, Gifford undoubtedly both found and fashioned a sions show that patrons readily shared the escapist sentiment revealed psychic refuge, one he needed more than ever when, in rapid succes- in his signature pictures. Indeed, the public had been exposed to such sion, the war broke out, he enlisted as a private in the National Guard, emerging sentiment since before mid-century in travel literature, to and Charles died.15 For the summers of 1861 to 1863, Gifford joined the which the sheer variety of Gifford’s subjects forms such an apt picto- Union forces protecting the cities of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, rial counterpart. The most renowned of these authors, Bayard Taylor Maryland, from feared rebel attack. Denied the high sketching season (1825–1878) and George William Curtis (1824–1892), counted Gifford afield, he correspondingly wrote home of his yearning to be among his among their friends. Both had toured widely, notably in the Middle friends and colleagues: East, and both affected a spirit of Eastern enchantment in their per- ceptions of the places they visited, in America or abroad. Curtis went Your most welcome letters came to me last week and made my so far as to allude to the title of “The Lotos-Eaters” (1833), one of the heart to be glad. Their lively descriptions of the goings-on . . . most famous verses by the English poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson

114 115 In certain conditions of the atmosphere, the air between you and the lower world seems to become a visible fluid—an ocean of pale crystalline blue, at the bottom of which the landscape lies. Peer- ing down into its depths, you at last experience a numbness of the senses, a delicious wandering of the imagination, such as follows (1809–1892), in his own Lotus-Eating: A Summer Book (1852), devoted to fig. 12 sanford Robinson Gifford, The the fifth pipe of opium.18 such northeastern resorts as the Hudson Highlands, the Catskills, Lake Catskill Mountain House, 1862 (plate 17) George, and Newport, among others. (The rising young Kensett sup- A year later, the artist-critic Benson (who, we earlier noted, had plied his illustrations.)17 In “The Lotos-Eaters,” Tennyson dramatized defined Gifford’s paintings as “American in character; Oriental in the lethargic pause of the Homeric warrior Odysseus and his troops, feeling”) invoked both opium and Tennyson (at some length) to char- returning to Ithaca from the Trojan Wars, at a mythical Mediterranean acterize such Gifford works as Mansfield Mountain, Vermont (plate 6), island populated by a tribe rendered perpetually stuporous by its steady A Sketch in the Wilderness (plate 10), and A Lake in the Wilderness at diet of the lotus plant, which the islanders offer to Odysseus’s men. In Sunset (plate 11). Homer’s epic, Odysseus goads his now-emasculated warriors to con- tinue their journey home. But Tennyson leaves them on the island beach There is feeling about [Gifford’s] pictures as of opium—of a day protesting, “We will not wander more,” exploiting their dazed reluc- just this side of the Orient. . . . Or, as a better illustration, we tance as a metaphor for a modern civilization exhausted by its industrial might say that they seem to represent the far-off land described and imperial drives and its attendant urban blight and social ills and in Tennyson’s Lotus-Eaters,—“a land where all things [always] longing for pastoral or exotic (or both) retreat—the kind promoted, on seemed the same,”— a popular level, in the writings of Curtis and Taylor and, for that matter, the paintings of Gifford. “A land of streams! some like a downward smoke, Narcotic states, in fact, became a fairly familiar metaphor for the Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn did go; experience of viewing landscape and, correspondingly, for Gifford’s And some through wavering lights and shadows broke, interpretation of it. In 1860, for example, Taylor lost himself in the vista Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. of the Hudson Valley from South Mountain in the Catskills (much the same view we see in Gifford’s Catskill Mountain House, fig. 12, plate 17; And again, a land where— see also plate 25), and reported back:

116 117 The charmed sunset lingered low adown above somber forest looks charred, as if the artist were already anticipating the In the red West: through mountain clefts the dale fig. 13 frederic Edwin Church, Twilight devastating effect of the war that—though long threatening—had only in the Wilderness, 1860. Oil on canvas, 22 Was seen far inland, and the yellow down 40 × 64 in. commenced as he was finishing the painting. Discussing this picture, Bordered with palm, and many a winding vale The Cleveland Museum of Art. Mr. and Mrs. William Benson rightly contrasted Gifford’s intensity and “depth of feeling” with And meadow. . . .” 19 H. Marlatt Fund, inv. 1965.233. Church’s “high and self-sustained” spirit and “extent and complexity of opposite natural scenery.”23 fig. 14 sanford Robinson Gifford, A Sketch A year later Benson again invoked the language of “The Lotos- At least six paintings in the current exhibition approximate the alter- of Winter Twilight, 1862 (plate 13) Eaters” to hail “the delicious indolence of . . . atmosphere” in A Gorge native mode Gifford concertedly sought in Twilight in the Catskills, the in the Mountains (fig. 1), inducing its viewer to “haveno care, but, sun- first of which followed it by just a year.A Sketch of Winter Twilight (fig. steeped at noon, ask that every pore of [his] body become a gate through 14, plate 13) is virtually a dress rehearsal for A Winter Twilight (1862; which sensation may flow, and every nerve an avenue along which may Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington), a picture almost twice course the subtle messengers charged with the secret of its beauty” (ital- its size. As he did with all his gloaming subjects after Twilight in the ics mine).20 Catskills, the artist modified the heat of the sky, gaining a corresponding However seductive observers like Benson found Gifford’s expres- relaxation in the mood that is a little more consonant with the psychic sion to be, the painter’s signature style by this time had become vul- intimacy of what Gifford reportedly called his “air-painting.”24 In fact, nerable to charges of mannerism.21 To the artist’s credit, he heard the there is air in this painting, not glazed on as in his daylight scenes but criticism, though he might have been provoked anyway by the sensa- applied in the generalizing touch with which the artist rendered the tion created by Church’s spectacular Twilight in the Wilderness (fig. 13), naked tree branches: the branches seem occluded by the density of the exhibited as a one-picture attraction the year before Gifford produced reddened sky at the horizon, an effect that he exported into the larger Twilight in the Catskills (1861; private collection). The latter picture painting. In France in late 1855, Gifford had admired what he regarded approaches Church’s work in size and essential effect, if not really in as the simple naturalism of the Barbizon painters and here, in both his mood. Whereas Church’s twilight blazes, Gifford’s smolders; even its looser technique and enclosed composition of trees, may have taken a

118 119 hint from Charles-François Daubigny (1817–1878) or Théodore Rous- opposite top seau (1812–1867). On the other hand, American colleagues such as fig. 15 sanford Robinson Gifford, Baltimore, 1862—Twilight, 1862. Oil on George Boughton (1834–1905) and Louis Rémy Mignot (1831–1870) canvas, 18 × 32 in. had recently essayed comparable hibernal subjects. Whatever the influ- New York State Military Museum & ence, the picture surely anticipates the Barbizon-inspired but more Veterans Research Center, Division of Military and Naval Affairs. stylized compositions of arboreal screens formulated by Dwight Tryon opposite bottom (1849–1925) in the 1880s. With all its distinctions from Twilight in the fig. 16 sanford Robinson Gifford, Hunter Catskills, A Sketch of Winter Twilight has its own likely wartime relevance. Mountain, Twilight, 1866. Oil on canvas, Gifford’s original sketches for it, probably made near the Bronx River in 30⅝ × 54⅛ in. November or December of 1861, included, for the figure kneeling to tie Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J. Terra Collection, inv. 1999.57. the lace of his skate in the painting, a model wearing a soldier’s cap and jacket. Omitting only the sickle moon in A Winter Twilight, Gifford the same year reprised the crepuscular effect in Baltimore, 1862—Twilight (fig. 15), which silhouettes a Union sentryman on a fortress parapet, perhaps exemplifying the painter himself.25 War’s conclusion undoubt- edly also fostered the somber repose of Hunter Mountain, Twilight (fig. 16), one of Gifford’s two or three most memorable pictures, as well as Home in the Wilderness (1866; Cleveland Museum of Art), with its pio- neer cabin, for which plate 28 may be the highly finished study. Both major paintings represented the artist at the International Exposition in Paris in 1867. The war may also be implicated in the development of a sublime mode that had been barely detectible in Gifford’s antebellum work (such as Sunset in the Wilderness with Approaching Rain, fig. 8, plate 3). It emerged forcefully in late 1863, following the death of Gifford’s

120 121 younger brother Edward, a major captured in battle and imprisoned in above landscape rhetoric.) The renowned Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth Louisiana. Late that year or early the next, Gifford produced a forty- fig. 17 sanford Robinson Gifford, A Coming (1833–1893), brother of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Storm on Lake George, ca. 1863 (plate 19) two-inch painting, A Coming Storm (Philadelphia Museum of Art), for Booth, had by 1865 purchased a Gifford painting called A Coming opposite which A Coming Storm on Lake George (fig 17, plate 19) and one other Storm; its exhibition at the National Academy that spring inspired Her- fig. 18 thomas Cole, Landscape with Figures: smaller, similarly titled painting (1863; Butler Institute of American Art, A Scene from The Last of the Mohicans, 1826. man Melville (1819–1891) to compose a poem of the same title sympa- Youngstown, Ohio), both based on sketches made at Lake George in Oil on panel. 26⅛ × 43¹⁄16 in. thizing with the actor’s conflicting emotions of mourning and shame.27 September 1863, may be considered studies. Nowhere more than in Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Gifford essayed the Lake George storm subject in one more major Daniel J. Terra Collection, inv. 1993.2. these compositions did Gifford reveal the example of the Hudson River painting of about 1877 (private collection), but by 1873, when he School founder Cole, who had prefigured the younger artist’s vortical rehearsed that work in Coming Rain on Lake George, A Sketch (plate 36), scheme of brooding clouds advancing on rolling mountains in one of his his expressive agenda appears to have shifted. Gifford opened up the Last of the Mohicans scenes (fig. 18), also based onL ake George topog- perspective (partly by simply using a wider format than in the earlier A raphy.26 Despite its indebtedness to Cole, Gifford’s descending tempest Coming Storm on Lake George, plate 19) to allow for fair weather on one is distinctive for its deliberate rendering and finesse, which enhance the side, and in so doing relieved much of the gravity of the original idea. imminence (as opposed to the occurrence) of the event and recall the The canoeists at left fleeing the storm’s onset accent the here-and-now- eerie storm subjects of the salt-marsh specialist Martin Johnson Heade ness of the refreshed conception. It is perhaps Gifford’s closest approxi- (1819–1904). (On the other hand, the apparently related small Gif- mation of the tenderly painted souvenir images of the resort, which, ford now known as Storm King on the Hudson, plate 20, with its ten- along with Newport, Kensett had made a specialty until his untimely ebrous cloud siege and churning surf—to say nothing of the fearful death just the year before the study was executed.28 Some of Gifford’s codger holding on for dear life on the rocky bank—seems anomalous handling is likewise tender and cool in tone (atypically for him), and for this artist, a self-conscious exercise in eighteenth-century sublime portrays identifiable landforms—Tongue Mountain in the center and

122 123 Black Mountain to the right—in the Narrows region of Lake George above painting of a storm over Monte Ferro (1871; Picker that were repeated over and over in his late colleague’s pictures. Techni- fig. 19 sanford Robinson Gifford, Mount Art Gallery, Colgate University, Hamilton, New Etna from Catania, 1868 (plate 32) cally, the surprisingly broad, turbulent execution of the clouds and the York) that previews the conception of Coming Rain opposite top scratched shafts of rain at left, much of which Gifford also carried into on Lake George, A Sketch (plate 36).30 In the years fig. 20 sanford Robinson Gifford, Siout, the large version, contrast with Kensett’s approach. Gifford must have Egypt, 1869 (plate 33) following that trip, which extended beyond his intended Coming Rain on Lake George, A Sketch, and the later, larger ver- opposite bottom 1850s travels to include Sicily (see fig. 19, plate 32), sion of it, for the same affluent urban vacationers serviced by Kensett, fig. 21 sanford Robinson Gifford, The the Middle East, and Asia Minor, the proportion of but it is hard to rule out supposition that his impulse to essay it included Statues of Memnon at Thebes, ca. 1872–78 Gifford’s American subjects yielded measurably to (plate 35) both homage and lament. that of Old World subjects. The newer work, argu- Perhaps the critical factor distinguishing Coming Rain on Lake George ably, was accompanied by more restraint in color- from its wartime precedents is the European sojourn (1868–69), Gif- istic and atmospheric—thus emotional—intensity. ford’s second, that separates them. War’s end liberated (and enriched) (Of course, his work from this period is littered a new wave of Americans to travel abroad. Gifford accompanied them, with exceptions to the rule: witness the spellbinding timing his departure in part to sail with his close friend, fellow painter suspension of time in Siout, Egypt, fig. 20, plate 33, Jervis McEntee (1828–1891), and his wife to England and later linking prefiguring the major work of 1871 in the National up with them, along with Church and his family and several other art- Gallery of Art, and the searing effacement of phara- ists, in Rome.29 All were abroad in great measure to collect material onic power by time and the sun that Gifford stresses with which to supply the revived tourist class with pictorial reminders in The Statues of Memnon at Thebes, fig. 21, plate 35.) of cherished stops. For Gifford’s clients those included the Italian lake A conspicuous—and exquisite—case in point can be district, especially Lago Maggiore, of which Gifford made one sizable seen in the recently rediscovered 1878 masterpiece

124 125 A Venetian Twilight (plate 43; see also the two studies for the painting, opposite top plate 41 and fig. 22/plate 42), one of at least twenty-five paintings of fig. 22 sanford Robinson Gifford, A Venetian Twilight, 1878 (plate 42) the city, most of them variations of the iconic skyline from the lagoon, opposite bottom that Gifford made between 1869 and his death in 1880.31 The artist fig. 23 sanford Robinson Gifford, Twilight in had intended to stop in Venice a few days in July 1869. But the Queen the Adirondacks, ca. 1864 (plate 22) of the Adriatic so seduced him that, on the eve of his departure five weeks later, he rued being “dragged reluctantly away” from “this dear old, magnificent, dilapidated, poverty-stricken city. . . . the loveliest, the most glorious and the most superb.”32 Yet by 1875, the artist claimed to be so weary of revisiting the city in paint that he began declining commissions for pictures of it.33 We can be thankful he continued to encounter patrons too persuasive to send away. In A Venetian Twilight, Gifford diluted the thick crepuscular light he had ventured in the earlier Twilight in the Catskills (1861; private collection), A Winter Twilight (see study, fig. 14, plate 13), andTwilight in the Adirondacks (fig. 23, plate 22) to achieve an impression more delicate and austere, yet still simmer- ing with the departing day. The two Venetian studies suggest that the greater subtlety evinced in the large painting was the essence of Gif- ford’s idea from the start; but, as frequently occurred in his progression from small to large, the proportion of objective features gave way to the preponderance of surrounding space, and the pigmentation thinned and paled, becoming more rarified. Notwithstanding Gifford’s color wor- ship and concerted classicism of design, late pictures such as A Vene- tian Twilight evoke the technical discretion and evanescence of James McNeill Whistler’s contemporaneous nocturnes.

126 127 erhaps seeking respite from the Venetian skyline, or to accom- above the deepest light and the deepest shade of the picture, and defining, at modate patrons preferring American subjects, Gifford found a fig. 24 sanford Robinson Gifford, A Sunset the same time, the plane of the water” with its reflection.36 P on the Hudson, 1876–79 (plate 38) domestic analog to the Old World harbor in broad views of the lower Formal precedents and patron demands aside, the subject of A opposite left Hudson River (near New York City) accented with origami-like sloops Sunset on the Hudson and the other works in its series, as Franklin Kelly fig. 25 sanford Robinson Gifford, Hook and schooners as identifiably American as the bragossi that so attracted Mountain on the Hudson River, 1867 (plate 30) has perceptively observed, may well have resonated deeply with Gif- 34 37 the artist’s pencil in Venice’s lagoon. A major example from this river opposite right ford. Until the arrival of the railroads, the river was his road north to series—indeed, the largest known painting in it—reappeared in 2007 fig. 26 sanford Robinson Gifford, An Indian home and family in the city of Hudson and to the Catskill Mountains, after an absence of well over a century: A Sunset on the Hudson (fig. 24, Summer’s Day on Claverack Creek, 1877–79 which had supplied the subject matter of the images that established the (plate 39) plate 38). Glowingly reviewed when exhibited at the National Academy career of his early paragon, Thomas Cole, as well as the largest propor- in 1877, it was sold in about 1879, after some evident retouching by the tion of subjects in his own work. In his adoption of the conceit of river artist, and had not been seen since.35 Gifford encompassed not only the passage, Gifford fashioned a timeless and transfigured state of being, sunset of the title, dissolving the rim of the Palisades at left, but also a suggesting with his light and weather effects the glory and gloom of broad transition from gilded cloud break to charcoal pall and deluge mortal tenancy. beyond the amber banks of Yonkers or vicinity at right. Air and water The seductiveness of Gifford’s trademark summer hazes and twi- seem one but for the horizon, barely defined by river craft and the gos- lights, the impressiveness of his storm compositions, and the charm samer line of graphite that, here as in so many of the artist’s discreetly of his more literary, vignette-style autumn scenes (see fig. 25/plate pigmented surfaces, has with time emerged from beneath the paint layer. 30, fig. 26/plate 39, and plate 31), cannot obscure the artist’s readiness At the work’s only known exhibition before this one, a shrewd observer to engage fetchingly with the prose of everyday. The facility did not pointed out the critical formal role of the gull or osprey stroking above apply simply to plein air sketches but to many memorable small paint- the water in the very center of the foreground, “concentrating in itself ings—and even occasionally to his largest compositions, such as the late

128 129 Ruins of the Parthenon (fig. 27), whichG ifford reportedly called “not above For Gifford, fishing lent further inducement to get outdoors, but a picture of a building but a picture of a day.”38 Indeed, it is fair to fig. 27 sanford Robinson Gifford, also represented in some measure a retreat from the turbulent post- Ruins of the Parthenon, 1880. Oil on canvas, speculate that the artist’s rehearsals for known large paintings generally 27⅜ × 52¼ in. war cultural climate in New York that he found increasingly chafing. reflect light and atmospheric conditions closer to what he observed (or Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Museum He and the other older painters dominating the National Academy (and at least what looks more naturalistic) than what his poetic impulses ulti- Purchase, Gallery Fund; frame restoration generously the walls of its annual exhibitions) were being challenged by a Continent- funded by the Women’s Committee of the Corcoran mately tinctured. In this exhibition that is most conspicuously observed Gallery of Art, 2009, inv. 81.7. trained younger generation seeking notice with exotic subjects and in A Sketch of Clay Bluffs on No Man’s Land (fig. 28, plate 40), document- opposite radical styles (often both); while at the same time, the academy lead- ing the artist’s October 1877 visit to the nearly uninhabited islet south fig. 28 sanford Robinson Gifford, ership alienated its own by imposing rules intended to defend its of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.39 In few of the artist’s works in any A Sketch of Clay Bluffs on No Man’s Land, turf against the burgeoning commercial marketplace. Such rules in 1877 (plate 40) size is there such a marvelous equivalence between the sunlit substances 1875 provoked Gifford’s attempted resignation from the academy. of earth and water and the malleable stuff of pigment, visible in the but- His colleagues rejected it, but thereafter he avoided the institution’s tery, blocky application that constitutes the texture of the bluffs and, as meetings.42 pleasing, the deft strokes denoting the roll, lap, and wash of the surf. In 1877 the artist married Mary Cecilia Canfield, a widow he had A critic of Gifford’s wondered in print what had steered him to the known at least since the year before, in a private ceremony only later lonely “haunt.”40 The answer lay as much in the pictures (at least five) announced to his family and friends. Since 1858 he had been an origi- the painter fashioned from the experience as it did in the figures inhab- nal occupant of the Tenth Street Studio Building, but he moved with iting at least three of them: fishermen.L ike several of his colleagues, his bride to an apartment, evidently pictured (with a portrait probably Gifford craved fishing and pursued it more avidly—often solitarily—in of his spouse) in the 1880 work Twilight (fig. 29, plate 44).43 Not long his last years than at any other time in his life. Surely his increasing after painting it, Gifford traveled with his wife to Lake Superior—to enthusiasm and opportunity for it was an outcome of his professional fish, of course, but also to boost his health, which had been slipping. success and the wide scenic repertory supplied by his varied travels— He returned to New York in worse shape and shortly died, a victim of including the American West—by 1874.41 “malarial fever and pneumonia,” in late August.44 With the simplicity

130 131 and equanimity that had ever marked him, he had reassured his parents fig. 29 sanford Robinson Gifford, Twilight, three weeks earlier, “I was and am prepared for any event.”45 1880 (plate 44, detail) As it was for Kensett in 1872, death for Gifford in 1880 may have been a mercy given the events and circumstances then transforming American art. Unlike their colleagues Church, Whittredge, Bierstadt, Jasper Cropsey (1823–1900), and others, most of whom lived up to or past the turn of the century, Kensett and Gifford did not live to wit- ness the wholesale critical and commercial retreat from their art and the fading—at least for more than a half century—of their reputations. Reviewing the 1880–81 Gifford memorial exhibition at the Metropoli- tan Museum, the young Continent-trained aesthete Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer (1851–1934) stated flatly that the artist’s pictures “rep- resent an almost outgrown phase of American art” and faulted what she saw as Gifford’s “hard” surfaces, “undiscriminated” textures, and “pan- oramic” compositions, which contrasted especially with the paintings of the French Barbizon painters and their American followers such as George Inness, who now vied for attention thanks to the post–Civil War broad in handling and agreeable in color,” exemplified by paintings such expansion of the American art market and the critical community that as A Sketch of Clay Bluffs on No Man’s Land (fig. 28, plate 40).48 By the welcomed it.46 And yet, armed as she was with her modernist agenda, post-centennial period Gifford may well have lost, to many, his claim to even Van Rensselaer conceded that, among the painters of his genera- the identity of poet, and it is hard to believe that, ardent colorist that he tion, Gifford produced pictures with “a distinct artistic value of their was, he could have embraced the broad, daubing brushwork of Impres- own, a value that has been certainly overestimated in the past, but that is sionism when it emerged in America late in the decade after his death. likely to be under-estimated just now in our eager sympathy with other Yet even a fascinated detractor like Van Rensselaer ventured that Gif- [i.e., newer] styles of work.”47 Finally, she thought she detected growth ford “had been touched by these new [stylistic] ideas stirring in our in his last works, those “pictorially simple” images such as Ruins of the midst.”49 As we heard the enigmatic artist tell his parents, “I was and am Parthenon (fig. 27) and “outdoor studies, usually of seashore bits. . . . prepared for any event.”

132 133 Sanford Robinson Gifford: A Biographical Sketch donald j. christensen

anford Robinson Gifford was two years old in 1825 remained intact for almost 150 years. The main build- when Thomas Cole exhibited the first landscape ing of the Giffords’ nineteenth-century foundry remains Spaintings of views of the upstate New York wilder- standing today.1 ness that launched the art movement that became known Surrounded by the natural landscape of the Hudson as the Hudson River School. More than thirty years after Valley throughout his youth, Gifford was also within Cole’s first success, Gifford himself would enjoy similar proximity of Thomas Cole. The English-born Cole acclaim, soon becoming one of the preeminent members moved permanently to Catskill, New York—located of the second generation of Hudson River School artists. across the river from Hudson and a few miles south— Once established, Gifford retained his leading position in the 1830s and lived there until his death in 1848. It within the movement until his death in 1880. is not known whether Sanford Gifford knew Cole per- Gifford’s path to becoming an artist whose work sonally or even met him. When Cole died Gifford was would largely concentrate on the landscape of the Hud- almost twenty-five and had already begun serious art son Valley could not have started with greater advantage. studies and successfully produced paintings for exhibi- Gifford was one of the few Hudson River School artists tion. While it is likely Gifford at least met Cole, there who actually grew up in the Hudson Valley. His parents, is no known record of such an encounter. It is known, Elihu Gifford and Eliza Starbuck Gifford, moved to the however, that Cole’s local presence was one of the factors city of Hudson, New York, not long after Sanford was in Gifford’s decision to become a landscape painter. Gif- born in Greenfield, New York, a small village that abuts ford told the story in later years that as a young, aspiring the western edge of Saratoga Springs. After working as portrait artist he climbed to the top of Mount Merino, a a tanner in Greenfield, Elihu Gifford brought his fam- gently rising mountain located just south of Hudson, and ily, which grew to include six sons and five daughters, to after absorbing the commanding views of the Hudson Hudson, located some thirty miles south of Albany on and the Catskill Mountains on the river’s opposite side, the eastern shore of the Hudson River, to join his wife’s spotted Cole’s house. It was then that Gifford made a uncle in an iron foundry business. The foundry flour- personal vow to commit his life to capturing the natural ished, and Elihu Gifford’s sons and descendants formed world of the landscape on canvas in the manner estab- a family dynasty of wealth and influence inH udson that lished by Cole.2 Gifford came to believe, as did Cole and

135 Miniature self-portrait of Sanford Gifford, 1850s. Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts.

other artists of the movement, that he was recording Ary was well known locally but had very little exposure original interest in portrait painting. Gifford was sup- the images of a fast-disappearing American landscape of outside of the area, beyond having exhibited a few land- ported during this time by his family, even though his natural wonder. scape paintings at the National Academy of Design in ambitions were leading him into the financially precari- Throughout the progress of his art career, Gifford New York City in the 1850s. In the mid-nineteenth cen- ous life of an artist, unlike the four of his five brothers retained a close association with the city of Hudson. He tury, nearly every affluent household inH udson owned who followed more secure careers in their father’s iron grew up there, was educated there, received his first art one or more Henry Ary paintings. In 1854 Hudson resi- business. Ironically, thirty years later, during the long lessons there, maintained a studio in his parents’ home dents commissioned Ary to paint a large copy of Gilbert depression of the 1870s, Gifford’s surviving brothers his entire life, and is buried there. For several decades Stuart’s famous “Landsdowne” portrait of George Wash- borrowed $4,000 from the artist to keep the foundry During those critical years of European travel, Gif- during the mid-nineteenth century, Hudson was a virtual ington. When the painting was complete, it was paraded from going bankrupt. Gifford’s fortunes as an artist had ford saw the great art of Great Britain and the Continent, crossroads for artists looking for inspiration and cama- through the streets of Hudson to cheering crowds. The eclipsed those of the iron foundry. The money loaned to current and past, including that of J. M. W. Turner, who raderie with other artists. Frederic Church, who moved Ary painting of Washington still hangs in Hudson’s city the Gifford foundry was not repaid, and Gifford forgave had died in 1851. Turner’s bold and uninhibited use of from Hartford, Connecticut, to Catskill in 1844 to study hall today.4 the debt in the will he drafted shortly before his death.5 color seemed to free Gifford from the palette restrictions with Cole, bought the mountain just south of Mount With Henry Ary’s influential encouragement, Gif- After his epiphany on Mount Merino and his trans- of Cole and those who slavishly imitated him. By the end Merino in 1860 and built there his grand Persian-style ford began to form ambitions for a professional art formation from portraitist to landscape painter, Gifford of his European tour, Gifford had become an original, mansion, Olana, which he occupied until his death in career. However, unlike his contemporary Frederic began to achieve some minor recognition for his work in embracing the color freedom he saw in the works of 1900. Church and the many artists who visited him and Church, who began his art studies with Cole at just the late 1840s through the mid-1850s. He was admitted Turner and creating his own expressions of color, both Sanford Gifford were an essential part of everyday life in eighteen years of age, Gifford was well into his twen- into the National Academy of Design as an associate in bold (as in the effect he achieved by painting the sun as Hudson throughout the period.3 ties before he started similar serious study. Instead of 1851 and became an academician in 1854. But the type if staring directly at it) and subtle (such as the nuances As a youngster, Gifford was surrounded by art in his following his artistic interests after graduating from his of recognition that Frederic Church, younger by three of color within shadow). This trip had been financed in parents’ affluent household; the walls of the house were hometown Hudson Academy in 1842, Gifford enrolled years, had achieved by the time he was in his mid-twen- part by a business partner of Gifford’s father, Charles C. filled with originalpaintings and engravings of great in Brown University to study religion and philosophy. ties, still eluded Gifford. It was his trip to Europe from Alger, who had an important collection of American and works of art. Gifford apparently started taking art lessons But he dropped out of Brown after just three semesters 1855 through 1857 that stimulated the unique artistic European art in his home in Hudson. Alger commis- as a teenager, probably as part of the Hudson Academy and did not seek any other type of formal education until qualities that would define Gifford’s work until his death sioned the painting that cemented Gifford’s mature style curriculum. He is known to have studied with Henry Ary he moved to New York City in 1845 to attend classes and for which he is remembered today—transporting and fame, Lake Nemi (fig. 11).G ifford spent the winter (1802–1859), who was originally from Rhode Island and in drawing, perspective, and anatomy taught by British him when he was well into his thirties from journeyman of 1856–57 in Rome working on this painting, which lived in the town of Catskill before moving to Hudson. artist John Rubens Smith (1775–1849), in pursuit of his painter to true heights of artistic achievement. would become his breakthrough achievement. Without

136 137 Sanford R. Gifford during the American Civil War, ca. 1861 (photographer unidentified). Sanford Robinson Gifford papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

the financial support fromA lger at that critical moment conventions of the time. This was somewhat uncom- ment of its natural resources. This historically pivotal in Gifford’s life, the artist we admire today may not have mon among the Hudson River School artists, many alliance was with James Pinchot, a leading wall­paper blossomed. Following the exhibition and success of Lake of whom, including Cole, saw the hand of God as the merchant whose family had acquired great wealth log- Nemi in 1858, Gifford continued to expand and refine direct architect of the nature they painted.8 Gifford took ging the forests of eastern Pennsylvania. Gifford and the innovative use of color throughout his remaining a more Emersonian or Transcendental view of nature, Pinchot established an informal pact to try to influence career.6 finding a spiritual relationship in the wholeness of man Pinchot’s eldest son to grow up to take action against the Gifford achieved as much financial success as any art- and nature, but one without the presence of a specifically type of destruction of nature that Gifford and many oth- ist of the time, with the probable exception of his good defined divine being. Despite his resistance to organized ers found alarming. The son was Gifford Pinchot (1865– stop painting. He produced several noteworthy military friend Frederic Church. But even by late 1857, Gifford religious observance, Gifford followed a strict habit on 1946), who became America’s first professional forester paintings but, more important, used his furloughs and had the financial security to reserve a studio, that also his travels of attending the Sunday sermons of a wide and, along with Theodore Roosevelt, established the limited travel opportunities to spend time at his parents’ served as living quarters, in the new Tenth Street Stu- range of religious sects, looking to find an intercon- forestry conservation principles that are still followed home in Hudson, combing through the scenic possibili- dio Building in New York City, which opened in 1858. necting human commonality among the various beliefs. today. He was named after Sanford Gifford, who was ties of the nearby Catskill Mountains. His finest Catskill Almost all of his contemporaries also maintained studios Ultimately he joined the Independent Liberal Church, his godfather. On the occasion of the boy’s baptism in images were produced during this time. there, and Gifford kept his studio in the building until a congregation headed by a proponent of Transcenden- April 1866, one of Gifford’s most celebrated paintings, In early July 1863, Gifford was reassigned and left his death. The Tenth Street Studios served as the closest talism, Octavius Brooks Frothingham. A former Unitar- Hunter Mountain, Twilight (fig. 16), entered the Pinchot Baltimore as part of the reinforcements marching toward approximation of an actual physical school for the paint- ian minister, Frothingham had broken away from the home, where its melancholy depiction of deforestation Gettysburg. The battle ended before he arrived, but he ers who became grouped under the Hudson River School Unitarian church because he believed it had become was prominently displayed and used as a type of didactic witnessed the retreating Confederate troops. Almost label. The artists who lived and worked in the building too focused on divinity. Many prominent New Yorkers message for the maturing Gifford Pinchot.10 immediately after his brush with the Gettysburg con- moved freely and amiably among one another’s quarters, were members of Frothingham’s congregation, includ- Sanford Gifford’s ethical perspective and his wide flict,G ifford was sent to New York City with the Union watching and assessing the works being created.7 ing Central Park codesigner Calvert Vaux. At the time range of interests and friendships outside the art world forces that quelled the Draft Riots of July 1863. This was While Gifford’s increasing success might have of Gifford’s death in 1880, Frothingham had retired, and prompted him to join the Union forces at the outbreak the only military action Gifford experienced during his assuaged any concerns his father may have had about his the head of the group was Felix Adler, the founder of the of the Civil War. He was one of the few artists of the service and when his tour of duty was completed he did son’s financial security, the artist’s perspective on reli- Society for Ethical Culture.9 time to enlist. He served for three years, as a volunteer, not reenlist.12 gion did little to comfort his deeply pious mother. Eliza One particular friendship of Gifford’s that was based, in the Seventh Regiment of New York’s National Guard, In August 1863, Gifford’s youngest brother, Edward, Gifford was a devout Baptist. Her son Sanford, on the in part, on a mutual sense of spiritual connection with spending most of his enlistment stationed in federal- a major in the Union Army, died of illness after escap- other hand, never adhered to any of the formal religious nature ended up changing the course of America’s treat- occupied Baltimore.11 During those years he did not ing from a Confederate prison in New Orleans following

138 139 Daguerreotypes of Sanford Gifford (left) and his brother Charles (right).

and Egypt. At the time of his death there were approxi- Gifford’s funeral, held in Hudson, was attended by mately 740 known paintings that had been completed virtually every leading figure of the Hudson River School, and signed by the artist.16 including, among his many artist friends, Frederic the battle of Port Hudson, Louisiana. Two years earlier took place in the spring. After the exhibition (and, one In 1877 the fifty-four-year-oldG ifford, a bachelor, Church, Jervis McEntee, Seymour Guy, Worthington an older brother, Charles, had committed suicide after a hoped, the sale of the paintings) the creative cycle would married Mary Cecilia Canfield, the widow of a friend Whittredge, Vincent Colyer, and Richard Hubbard. In long battle with depression. (Dr. Sanford Gifford, who start again.14 from outside Gifford’s artistic circle. It is not known how a sense, Gifford’s death marked the end of a glorious era owns some of the paintings displayed in this exhibition, By the early 1870s, however, interest in the Hudson long Gifford and his future wife had been acquainted of American painting that had dominated the art world is a descendant of Charles Gifford.) Yet another brother, River School’s subjects and tightly naturalistic style was before their marriage or exactly when she was widowed. for more than fifty years. Other important artists of the Frederick, died suddenly in early 1865, and two sisters beginning to wane. New styles emerging from Europe She outlived the artist by seven years and is buried next era had died previously, including Emanuel Leutze and had died earlier. Gifford’s parents outlived seven of their started to gain fashionable attention. Gifford and other to him in the Hudson cemetery. Shortly after his wed- John Frederick Kensett. The stylistic approach Thomas eleven children, including Sanford. The Giffords estab- artists started expanding their range of subjects to scenes ding, Gifford returned to painting portraits, producing Cole had introduced in 1825 was going out of fashion lished a family burial plot in the Hudson cemetery when of the American West and views that Americans might memorable likenesses of his wife and his parents. and would become almost forgotten until its rediscovery Edward’s body was brought back to Hudson. Sanford see on their Grand Tours of Europe. Gifford took his Gifford drafted a will in late March 1880, making his in the 1970s. In October 1880, a memorial exhibition selected the site for its magnificent view of theB erkshire second and last trip abroad in 1868–69, traveling as far sister Mary, who had been his most constant companion of Gifford’s work opened in the newly completed Cen- Mountains to the east. Ultimately, twenty-eight Gif- as Egypt to find new scenic material.O n his return, his before his marriage, the largest beneficiary of his estate. tral Park building of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ford family members, including Sanford and his parents, paintings of Venice became a sensation, the demand for In the late spring Jervis McEntee noted that the painter which Gifford had helped found in 1870.18 would be interred in the plot.13 them so great that he painted as many as he could over was “not at all well.” Gifford traveled to Lake Supe- Gifford’s funeral was absent of religious ceremony. After the Civil War, Gifford settled into the estab- the next five years until, in 1875, he began discouraging rior in July, hoping the rest would help him regain his His devout mother remained troubled by her son’s non- lished pattern of artists of the time, taking carefully commissions.15 health. But his condition worsened, and he returned to traditional religious views. However, the Baptist minis- planned and wide-reaching sketching trips during the In 1870 Gifford traveled to Wyoming and Colorado, New York, where he died on August 29, 1880. The cause ter of the church in Hudson that she attended reported summer and fall months of the year and returning to the but he produced few paintings of the West. Ultimately, was reported, in nineteenth-century medical jargon, as that he once asked her about her son’s service in life. Her studio during the winter, when he would create a series somewhat more than a third of Gifford’s paintings were “malarial fever.”17 answer was, “His art was his ministry.”19 of increasingly detailed oil sketches before completing a of Hudson Valley scenes (mostly within the Catskills), finished work.G ifford focused on completing the paint- another third were of other American landscapes (New ings he produced during this era in time for the annual Hampshire, Maine, Long Island, etc.), and the other exhibition at the National Academy of Design, which third of foreign settings, most notably Italy, Greece,

140 141 10. Sanford R. Gifford to Elihu Gifford, Sep. 25, 1855, 18. Bayard Taylor, “Travels at Home: From the New- European Letters, typescripts of unlocated origi- York Tribune of July 12, 1860,” reprinted in Scenery nals in 3 vols., copy in author’s collection, and on of the Catskill Mountains as Described by Irving, Cooper, microfilm inA rchives of American Art, Smithsonian Bryant, Willis Gaylord Clark, N. P. Willis, Miss Mar- Institution, reel D21, vol. 1, Sep. 25, 1855, partially tineau, Tyrone Power, Parke Benjamin, Thomas Cole, quoted in Avery and Kelly 2003, p. 11. Bayard Taylor, and other Eminent Writers (New York: 11. ibid. D. Fanshaw, 1860), p. 43. In a remarkable early nod 12. “Address by W. Whittredge,” Gifford Memorial to the radical free-verse poet and his Leaves of Grass Meeting, p. 42. (1855), Taylor added about the vista’s spell, “Or, in Notes 13. “Address by Prof. John F. Weir: Sanford R. Gif- the words of Walt Whitman, you ‘loaf, and invite ford, His Life and Character as Artist and Man,” in your soul.’” Gifford Memorial Meeting, p. 12; Periwinkle, “From 19. Proteus, “Our Artists II.” Note that in Tennyson’s New York: Fresh Gossip of Books, Authors, Art and poem, line 5 of the third stanza (quoted) is, “And Artists, from Our Own Correspondent, New York, meadow, set with slender galingale.” February 12, 1862,” Springfield[ Mass.] Weekly Repub- 20. Proteus [pseud. for Eugene Benson], “Art: Concern- lican, Feb. 15, 1862, p. 1, quoted in Gerald L. Carr, ing Two Great and Representative Works,” New York “Sanford Robinson Gifford’s Gorge in the Mountains Commercial Advertiser, Dec. 27, 1862, p. 1, hereafter the enchantment of Sanford 4. john F. Weir, “Sanford R. Gifford: His Life and Char- Revived,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 38 (2003), p. “Proteus, ‘Concerning.’” Benson’s lifting from Ten- Gifford by kevin j. avery acter as Artist and Man, Extracts from an Address 216. nyson’s “The Lotus-Eaters” is from Part III of the by Professor John F. Weir, before the Century Club, 14. Weiss 1987, p. 53; Avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 37, poem’s “Choric Song”: “Lo! In the middle of the 1. Proteus [pseud. for Eugene Benson], “Our Artists II: November 19th, 1880,” in Memorial Catalogue, p. 10. 48–49, n. 62. wood / The folded leaf is woo’d from out the bud S. R. Gifford,” New York Commercial Advertiser, Oct. 5. for Gifford’s early life, see Ila Weiss, Poetic Landscape: 15. weiss 1987, pp. 52–53, 91–92; Avery and Kelly 2003, / With winds upon the branch, and there / Grows 17, 1861, p. 1, hereafter “Proteus, ‘Our Artists II.’” The Art and Experience of Sanford R. Gifford (New- p. 37. For a detailed account of the involvement of green and broad, and takes no care, / Sun-steeped at 2. “Sanford R. Gifford,” Art Journal 6 (1880), p. 320; ark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1987), pp. Gifford and several of his brothers in the war, see noon, and in the moon / Nightly dew-fed. . . . ” For “The Memorial Collection of the Works of the Late 46–68, hereafter “Weiss 1987”; and Kevin J. Avery, Diane Shewchuk, “‘All is excitement and anxiety previous discussion along this line, see Avery and Sanford R. Gifford” in Loan Collection of Paintings, “Gifford and the Catskills,” in Avery and Kelly 2003, here’: A New York Family’s Experience of the Civil Kelly 2003, p. 14; and Avery 2005, pp. 163–69. in the West and East Galleries (October 1880 to March pp. 26–28. War,” The Hudson Valley Review 27, no. 2 (2011), pp. 21. Proteus, “Concerning”: “The strict charge brought 1881), Handbook No. 6 (New York: The Metro- 6. s. R. Gifford to O.[ctavius] B.[rooks] Frothingham, 27–48, hereafter, “Shewchuk 2011.” against Gifford is that he is a mannerist;—that he per- politan Museum of Art, 1881), pp. 3–11; [Waldo S. Nov. 6, 1874, copy of original letter in author’s col- 16. S. R. Gifford to “My dear friends at Nestledown” ceives but one tone and reproduces but one aspect. Pratt], A Memorial Catalogue of the Paintings of San- lection; another version of the manuscript letter is in [Candace and Tom Wheeler], July 27, 1862, Gifford The charge was not without truth when first made.” ford Robinson Gifford, N. A., with a Biographical and the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institu- Family Records and Letters, vol. 1, copy in author’s 22. See also the discussion (with illustration) of Twilight Critical Essay by Prof. John F. Weir, of the Yale School of tion, Washington, D.C., microfilm reel D10; a type- collection, partially quoted in Avery and Kelly 2003, in the Catskills in Avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 13–14, Fine Arts (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of script of the letter is in the Gifford Family Records p. 133. 36–37. Art, 1881), hereafter “Memorial Catalogue.” See also and Letters (3 vols.), author’s collection. 17. Curtis’s Lotus-Eating: A Summer Book (New York: 23. Proteus, “Our Artists II.” Preface and Acknowledgments, in Kevin J. Avery 7. “Address by W. Whittredge,” in Gifford Memorial Harper and Brothers, 1852), is discussed at some 24. George W. Sheldon, “How One Landscape-Painter and Franklin Kelly, eds., Hudson River School Visions: Meeting of The Century (New York: The Century length in Kevin J. Avery, “Selling the Sublime and Paints,” Art Journal 3 (Sep. 1877), p. 284: “With Mr. The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford (New York: The [Club], 1880), pp. 33–34, hereafter “Gifford Memo- the Beautiful: New York Landscape Painting and Gifford landscape-painting is air-painting.” Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), p. ix, hereaf- rial Meeting”; Weiss 1987, pp. 51–57; Avery and Tourism,” in Catherine Hoover Voorsanger and 25. the formulation of A Winter Twilight, including ref- ter “Avery and Kelly 2003,” catalog for exhibition at Kelly 2003, pp. 27–28. John K. Howat, eds., Art and the Empire City: New erence to A Sketch of Winter Twilight (plate 13) and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Amon 8. gifford’s early sketching trips are described in Weiss York, 1825–1861, exhib. cat. (New York: The Met- illustrations of the pencil sketches of the setting and Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Tex.; and National 1987, pp. 61–68. See also Clair A. Conway and Alicia ropolitan Museum of Art, 2000), pp. 120–23; and for the figures, is discussed inW eiss 1987, pp. 93, Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Oct. 2003–Sep. Ruggiero Bocchi, “Chronology,” in Avery and Kelly in Kevin J. Avery, “Gifford and the Catskills: Resort 229; and Avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 145–48. 2004. 2003, pp. 244–45. and Refuge,” in Philip Earenfight and Nancy Siegel, 26. For Edward Gifford’s war experience, Shewchuk 3. “Sanford R. Gifford,” Art Journal 6 (1880), p. 319. 9. Weiss 1987, pp. 69–73, esp. p. 70; Franklin Kelly, eds., Within the Landscape: Essays on Nineteenth-Cen- 2011; for his rank, Annual Report of the Adjutant- See also “Sanford Gifford’s Funeral,” New-York Eve- “Nature Distilled: Gifford’s Vision of Landscape,” in tury American Art and Culture (Carlisle, Pa.: Trout General of the State of New York for the Year 1903, ning Post, Sep. 1, 1880, p. 4. Avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 10–11. Gallery, Dickinson College, 2005), pp. 169–76, ser. no. 37 (Albany: Oliver A. Quayle, 1904), p. 50. hereafter “Avery 2005.” The formulation and meaning of A Coming Storm,

142 143 including discussion of plate 19, is discussed in Weiss 36. “The Academy of Design: Some Landscapes in the of Delaware Press, 1987), hereafter “Weiss 1987”; 9. Weiss 1987, pp. 40–41; Avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 1987, pp. 102–3, 238–39, 303; and Avery and Kelly Fifty-Second Annual Exhibition, Second Paper,” and Kevin J. Avery and Franklin Kelly, eds., Hudson 27, 81–82; J. Wade Caruthers, Octavius Brooks Froth- 2003, pp. 148–51. New York Evening Post, Apr. 21, 1877, p. 1. River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gif- ingham: Gentle Radical (Tuscaloosa: University of 27. Weiss 1987, pp. 102–3; Avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 37. avery and Kelly 2003, p. 238. ford (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alabama Press, 1977), p. 71. 152–53. 38. “Sanford R. Gifford,” Art Journal 6 (1880), p. 319, 2003), hereafter “Avery and Kelly 2003.” 10. Char Miller, Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Mod- 28. See also the discussion of the large ca. 1877 version quoted in Weiss 1987, p. 325; and Avery and Kelly 2. “Address by W. Whittredge,” in Gifford Memorial ern Environmentalism (Washington, D.C.: Island of A Coming Rain, Lake George in Weiss 1987, pp. 2003, p. 239. Meeting of The Century (New York: The Century Press, 2001), pp. 108–9. 313–14; and in Avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 154–55. 39. also discussed in Avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 219–20. [Club], 1880), pp. 33–34; Avery and Kelly 2003, 11. weiss 1987, p. 91. 29. For Gifford’s second European sojourn, see Weiss 40. “Reopening the Studios,” New-York Daily Tribune, p. 25. 12. ibid., pp. 97, 98, 100. 1987, pp. 113–27; Heidi Applegate, “A Traveler Oct. 13, 1877, p. 2, quoted in Avery and Kelly 2003, 3. s. G. W. Benjamin, “Our American Artists V: San- 13. Ibid., p. 160. For Edward Gifford’s rank, Annual by Instinct,” in Avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 59–67; p. 220: “Mr. Sandford [sic] R. Gifford has found a new ford R. Gifford,” Wide Awake 8, no. 5 (May 1879), Report of the Adjutant-General of the State of New “Chronology,” in ibid., pp. 250–51. haunt on No-Man’s Land, a dreary island, inhabited p. 307. Ruth Piwonka and Roderic H. Blackburn, A York for the Year 1903, ser. no. 37 (Albany: Oliver A. 30. Weiss 1987, pp. 268–69, 313–14; Avery and Kelly by three families, south of Martha’s Vineyard. What Visible Heritage: Columbia County, New York, A His- Quayle, 1904), p. 50. 2003, p. 154. he has found there is unknown; hence there will be a tory in Art and Architecture (Hensonville, N.Y.: Black 14. Eliot Candee Clark, History of the National Academy 31. For discussion of Gifford’s 1869 Venetian sojourn greater curiosity to see his next work.” Dome Press, 1996), p. 148. of Design, 1825–1953 (New York: Columbia Univer- and its artistic results, see Weiss 1987, pp. 125–26, 41. Gifford’s two trips west, in 1870 and 1874, are 4. Rachel Minick, “Henry Ary, Unknown Painter of sity Press, 1954), pp. 28–33. 275–77, 280–84; Avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 65, 209– described in Weiss 1987, pp. 130–33; and Avery and the Hudson River School,” The Brooklyn Museum 15. avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 209–10. 12. Kelly 2003, pp. 67–69; and “Chronology” in ibid., Bulletin 11, no. 4 (Summer 1950), p. 14. For Gif- 16. “The Memorial Collection of the Works of the Late 32. sanford R. Gifford to Elihu Gifford [his father], July pp. 251, 254. ford’s early influences and training, seeA very and Sanford R. Gifford” in Loan Collection of Paintings, 17, 1869, European Letters, vol. 3, p. 129, copy in 42. Weiss 1987, pp. 142–43; “Chronology,” Avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 27–29. in the West and East Galleries (October 1880 to March author’s collection, quoted in Avery and Kelly 2003, Kelly 2003, p. 253. 5. for Gifford’s education, see Weiss 1987, pp. 49, 54; 1881), Handbook No. 6 (New York: The Metropoli- p. 212. 43. weiss 1987, pp. 147, 149; Avery and Kelly 2003, pp. Avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 27, 28. For background on tan Museum of Art, 1881), pp. 3–11; Weiss 1987, pp. 33. Sanford R. Gifford to John F. Weir, May 6, 1875, 20, 254. Gifford’s loan to the family, “Diary Entry for Febru- 168, 327–30. John F. Weir Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale 44. M. G. van Rennselaer [sic], “Sanford Robinson Gif- ary 1, 1876, by Jervis McEntee,” The Jervis McEn- 17. “Diary Entry for July 16, 1880, by Jervis McEntee,” University Library, New Haven, partially quoted ford,” The American Architect and Building News, Feb. tee Diaries, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian The Jervis McEntee Diaries, Archives of American in Avery and Kelly 2003, p. 210: “I have painted so 11, 1882, p. 63, hereafter “Van Rennselaer 1882”; Institution, accessed June 29, 2012, http://www.aaa. Art, Smithsonian Institution, accessed June 29, 2012, many Venitian [sic] pictures during the last five years Weiss 1987, pp. 158–59; Avery and Kelly 2003, p. si.edu/collections/diaries/mcentee/entry/18760201. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/diaries/mcentee/ that I have lately declined to paint them when they 255. Gifford’s will, signed on Mar. 27, 1880, was pub- entry/18800716; “A New-York Artist Dead: Sand- have been asked for. One can’t stay in Venice any- 45. Gifford to “My dear Father and Mother,” Aug. 9, lished in full in the Hudson Evening Register, Nov. 22, ford [sic] R. Gifford Taken Off by Pneumonia,” The more than one can eat partridge every day.” 1880, typescript in Gifford Family Letters and 1880, p. 2; see also Weiss 1987, p. 168. New York Times, Aug. 30, 1880; Weiss 1987, pp. 158– 34. For discussion of A Sunset on the Hudson and other Records, vol. 3, copy in author’s collection, quoted 6. avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 103–4; Weiss 1987, p. 197. 59. works in the lower Hudson River series, see Weiss in Weiss 1987, p. 159. 7. Annette Blaugrund, The Tenth Street Studio Build- 18. For the funeral attendees, “Diary Entry for August 1987, pp. 305–6; and Avery and Kelly 2003, pp. 225– 46. van Rennselaer 1882, pp. 63, 64. ing: Artist-Entrepreneurs from the Hudson River School 31, 1880, by Jervis McEntee,” The Jervis McEn- 27, 236–39. 47. ibid., p. 63. to the American Impressionists (Seattle: University of tee Diaries, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian 35. There is no Sunset on the Hudson (or related title) 48. ibid., p. 64. Washington Press, 1997), pp. 23–31, catalog for Institution, accessed June 29, 2012, http://www.aaa. of dimensions as large as those of the present pic- 49. ibid. exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum, Southamp- si.edu/collections/diaries/mcentee/entry/18800831. ture (23⅛ × 42⅜ in.; 58.7 × 107.6 cm) listed in the ton, N.Y., and the National Academy, New York, For the Metropolitan exhibition, Avery and Kelly Memorial Catalogue of Gifford’s paintings compiled June–Nov. 1997. 2003, p. 79. in 1881, but it may be identifiable with no. 643: Sanford Robinson Gifford: 8. barbara Novak, American Painting of the Nineteenth 19. Rev. James M. Bruce, “Memorial Sermon: In Mem- “The Palisades . . . sold in 1875 to Mr. Tinker, Lon- A Biographical Sketch Century: Realism, Idealism, and the American Expe- ory of Eliza Robinson Gifford” (Hudson, N.Y.: First don.” However, if so, the catalog compilers lacked by donald j. christensen rience (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969), pp. Baptist Church, Nov. 12, 1882), p. 9. the dimensions of that work and accurate data about 62–63. when it was sold and to whom; “Tinker” is not 1. For information on Sanford Gifford’s background, among the known English ancestors of the South life, and career, the following two sources are invalu- African family that offered the painting for sale in able: Ila Weiss, Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experi- 2007. ence of Sanford R. Gifford (Newark, Del.: University

144 145 Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. He August, Gifford Pinchot (d. 1946), Gifford’s continues to exhibit paintings at the National namesake and godson, is born; he becomes the Academy of Design and other venues. Remains first head of the U.S. national forest system. in Rome during the winter and early spring of 1868 gifford is elected member of Union League 1856–57, completing the painting Lake Nemi, a commission for Charles C. Alger, a business Club. Travels to Europe with artist Jervis associate of his father. Upon return to New McEntee and wife, visiting England, France, York City, Gifford rents quarters in the Tenth Switzerland, and Italy, with an extended stay Street Studio Building. in Rome. 1869 gifford continues foreign travel, journeying A Brief Chronology 1858 Lake Nemi is exhibited at the annual exhibi- tion of the National Academy of Design. The to Egypt, the Levant, Greece, Turkey, Italy donald j. christensen painting gains high praise and elevates Gif- (again), Bulgaria, and Austria. Returns to ford into the core group of preeminent sec- United States in September. Becomes mem- ond-generation Hudson River School artists, ber of group formed to organize Metropolitan among them Frederic Church, Jasper Francis Museum of Art. Cropsey, and John Frederick Kensett. 1870 gifford exhibits paintings of Venice to great acclaim, generating multiple commissions 1823 Sanford Robinson Gifford is born July 10 in philosophy; leaves permanently after three 1859 gifford is elected member of Dodsworth’s of similar views. Builds studio on top of par- Greenfield, New York, to Elihu and Eliza Star- semesters. Artists Reception Association and joins the ents’ home in Hudson, New York. Travels buck Gifford. Elihu Gifford joins iron foundry Century Association (a.k.a. the Century Club). to the West, concentrating on Colorado and in Hudson, New York, on the eastern shore 1844 Church begins two years of art study with Cole in Catskill. 1861 gifford joins the Seventh Regiment of New Wyoming. of the Hudson River. Gifford family moves to After leaving Brown Univer- sity, Gifford probably continues art studies in York State’s National Guard at the outbreak of Hudson. 1871 gifford begins traveling extensively through- Hudson with Ary. the Civil War in April, spending most of his out the Northeast. Through 1876 he has the 1825 thomas Cole exhibits in New York City the enlistment in federally occupied Baltimore. most productive era of his career; exhibits first landscape paintings ofH udson River val- 1845 gifford moves to New York City to study with His older brother Charles dies in May. Gifford multiple paintings in numerous exhibitions, ley and Catskill Mountain scenes, launching English artist John Rubens Smith; his original continues sketching and painting landscape gaining consistent acclaim. the art movement later known as the Hudson goal is to become a portrait artist. scenes, as well as military subjects, throughout River School. 1846 gifford enrolls in art classes at the National the Civil War years. 1877 gifford weds Mary Cecilia Canfield in a pri- vate ceremony in June. Marriage kept secret 1826 frederic Edwin Church (d. 1900) is born in Academy of Design in New York City. 1863 gifford is among troops marched to Gettys- from family and friends until December. Hartford, Connecticut. Church later becomes 1847 national Academy of Design accepts the first burg as reinforcements, but the battle ends the foremost of the second-generation Hud- Gifford painting, Lake Scene, on the Catskills, before he arrives. Sent to New York City in 1880 gifford drafts will in late March. Evidence of son River School artists. for its annual exhibition. July as member of troops to quell Draft Riots. illness is revealed in late June. Travels to Lake Youngest brother Edward dies from typhoid Superior in July to restore health. Returns 1830 Gifford begins formal education at private 1848 gifford exhibits paintings at the National fever in Louisiana after escaping from Con- to New York; dies on August 29. Memorial Hudson Academy, graduating in 1842. Academy of Design’s annual exhibition and at federate prison following Port Hudson battle. exhibition of 160 paintings and sketches is ca. 1832 Cole establishes part-time residency and studio the American Art-Union. Cole dies in Catskill. Gifford exhibits A Coming Storm, a moody mounted in newly built Metropolitan Museum landscape possibly expressing mournfulness at in Catskill, New York, on the western shore of 1851 gifford is elected an associate of the National of Art in Central Park. the Hudson River. (Cole marries Maria Bar- his brother’s death, in Philadelphia. Academy of Design and continues to exhibit 1881 A Memorial Catalogue of the Paintings of Sanford tow of Catskill and moves there permanently paintings there annually. 1865 gifford’s brother Frederick dies in January. A Robinson Gifford, published by the Metropoli- in 1836.) Coming Storm, then owned by the actor Edwin 1854 gifford is elected an academician of the tan Museum of Art, identifies 739 paintings in Booth, is exhibited at the National Academy of ca. 1838 Gifford reportedly has his first art instruction, National Academy of Design. a comprehensive list of Gifford’s works. Paint- possibly from Henry Ary. Design in April, shortly after Booth’s brother ings inherited by Gifford’s wife are auctioned 1855–57 gifford tours Europe, studying works of art in John Wilkes assassinates Abraham Lincoln. in April. 1842 Gifford enters Brown University in Provi- England, Scotland, France, the Netherlands, (Exhibition of painting widely considered dence, Rhode Island, to study religion and Edwin Booth’s public expression of grief.) In

146 147 A Study of Kauterskill Clove, 1862 A Ledge in the Catskills, ca. 1865 The Statues of Memnon at Thebes, Oil on canvas, 11 × 9 in. Oil on canvas, 13¼ × 11 in. ca. 1872–78 Plate 16 Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D. Oil on canvas, 22½ × 18 in. Cambridge, Massachusetts Plate 35 The Catskill Mountain House, 1862 Plate 26 Oil on canvas, 10 × 18½ in. Coming Rain on Lake George, Plate 17 A Coming Shower, A Sketch, A Sketch, 1873 ca. 1865–67 Oil on canvas, 11 × 19¾ in. Claverack Creek, 1862 Oil study on canvas, 5⅞ × 9 in. Plate 36 Exhibition Checklist Oil on canvas, 11¼ × 19¼ in. Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D. Plate 18 Cambridge, Massachusetts The Traps, Shawangunk Mountains, Plate 27 New York, A Sketch, ca. 1875 A Coming Storm on Lake George, Oil on paperboard, 4¼ × 8¼ in. ca. 1863 A Home in the Wilderness, Plate 37 Oil on canvas, 10 × 18 in. A Sketch, 1865–67 Plate 19 Oil on canvas, 9 × 15 in. A Sunset on the Hudson, 1876–79 Plate 28 Oil on canvas, 23⅛ × 42⅜ in. note: Marina Grande, Capri, 1857 A Lake in the Wilderness Storm King on the Hudson, ca. 1863 Plate 38 All works have been lent from Oil on canvas, 4⅞ × 4⅞ in. at Sunset, 1861 Oil on paper laid on canvas, Echo Lake, Franconia Notch, ca. 1866 private collections, except where Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D. Oil on canvas, 9 × 14 in. 7 × 10 in. Oil on canvas, 12 × 10 in. An Indian Summer’s Day on indicated. The titles listed are in Cambridge, Massachusetts Plate 11 Plate 20 Plate 29 Claverack Creek, 1877–79 chronological order. Plate 5 Oil on canvas, 30 × 24 in. A Sketch in Kauterskill Clove, Mount Chocorua, Hook Mountain on the Plate 39 Double Self-Portrait, June 1853 Mansfield Mountain, Vermont, 1859 ca. 1861 New Hampshire, 1863 Hudson River, 1867 Pencil on paper, 5 × 7¼ in. Oil on canvas, 30½ × 60¼ in. Oil on canvas, 13¼ × 11¼ in. Oil on canvas, 18 × 30 in. Oil on canvas, 12⅝ × 10⅞ in. A Sketch of Clay Bluffs on Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D. Plate 6 Harvard Art Museums / Plate 21 Plate 30 No Man’s Land, 1877 Cambridge, Massachusetts Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Oil on canvas, 9¼ × 16¼ in. Plate 1 Mount Mansfield, 1859 Massachusetts. Gift of Sanford Twilight in the Adirondacks, Hook Mountain, near Nyack, Plate 40 Oil on canvas, 10½ × 20 in. Gifford, M.D., inv. 2005.188 ca. 1864 New York, 1867 Self-Portrait, November 1857 Plate 7 Plate 12 Oil on canvas, 10½ × 18 in. Oil on canvas, 16 × 14 in. A Twilight Sketch in Venice, ca. 1878 Oil on canvas, 30 × 25 in. Plate 22 Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D. Oil on board, 7 × 11½ in. Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D. Camping for the Night on A Sketch of Winter Twilight, 1862 Cambridge, Massachusetts Plate 41 Cambridge, Massachusetts Mansfield Mountain, early 1860s Oil on canvas, 8 × 16 in. Long Branch, 1864 Plate 31 Plate 2 Oil on canvas, 10 × 16½ in. Plate 13 Oil on canvas, 11 × 19 in. A Venetian Twilight, 1878 Plate 8 Plate 23 Mount Etna from Catania, 1868 Oil on canvas, 9 × 16 in. Sunset in the Wilderness with A Ledge on South Mountain, in Oil on canvas, 8 × 13⅝ in. Plate 42 Approaching Rain, ca. 1852–53 Lake George, 1860 the Catskills, ca. 1862 A Sketch of the Beach at Manchester, Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D. Oil on canvas, 7¼ × 11¼ in. Oil on canvas, 10⅝ × 20⅛ in. Oil on canvas, 13⅜ × 10⅛ in. Massachusetts, 1864 Cambridge, Massachusetts A Venetian Twilight, 1878 Plate 3 Plate 9 Harvard Art Museums / Oil on canvas, 10¼ × 19¼ in. Plate 32 Oil on canvas, 23½ × 42 in. Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D. Plate 43 A Moment’s Rest, ca. 1854–55 A Sketch in the Wilderness, Massachusetts. Gift of Sanford Cambridge, Massachusetts Siout, Egypt, 1869 Oil on canvas, 8⅝ × 15 in. ca. 1860–61 Gifford, M.D., inv. 2006.1 Plate 24 Oil on canvas, 8½ × 15⅝ in. Twilight, 1880 Plate 4 Oil on canvas, 8½ × 15¾ in. Plate 14 Plate 33 Oil on canvas, 15 × 9½ in. Plate 10 A Sketch from North Mountain, Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D. Kauterskill Clove, in the in the Catskills, October 3, 1865 The Column of St. Mark’s, Cambridge, Massachusetts Catskills, 1862 Oil on canvas, 9¾ × 18⅞ in. Venice, 1870 Plate 44 Oil on canvas, 13 × 11 in. Plate 25 Oil on canvas, 26 × 21½ in. Plate 15 Collection of Sanford Gifford, M.D. Cambridge, Massachusetts Plate 34

148 149 A Ledge on South Mountain, in the Catskills, ca. 1862 Storm King on the Hudson, ca. 1863 (plate 20), 52–53 (plate 14), 41 A Study of Kauterskill Clove, 1862 (plate 16), 45 Long Branch, 1864 (plate 23), 58–59 Sunset in the Wilderness with Approaching Rain, ca. Mansfield Mountain, Vermont, 1859 (plate 6), detail 1852–53 (plate 3, fig. 8), 18–19, 110 12–13, 24–25 A Sunset on the Hudson, 1876–79 (plate 38, fig. 24), 89, Index of Works Reproduced Marina Grande, Capri, 1857 (plate 5), 23 128 Miniature Self-Portrait, 1850s, 137 The Traps, Shawangunk Mountains, New York, A Sketch, ca. 1875 (plate 37), 87 A Moment’s Rest, ca. 1854–55 (plate 4, fig. 9), detail 4–5, 20–21, 110–111 Twilight, 1880 (plate 44, fig. 29), 101, detail 133

Mount Chocorua, New Hampshire, 1863 (plate 21), 54–55 Twilight in the Adirondacks, ca. 1864 (plate 22, fig. 23), 56–57, 127 Documentary photographs of Sanford Gifford Echo Lake, Franconia Notch, ca. 1866 (plate 29), 71, 134 Mount Etna from Catania, 1868 (plate 32, fig. 19), appear on pages 139 and 140, and of his brother 76–77, 124 A Twilight Sketch in Venice, ca. 1878 (plate 41), 94–95 Charles Gifford on page 140. A Gorge in the Mountains (Kauterskill Clove), 1862 (fig. 1), 102 Mount Mansfield, 1859 (plate 7), endpapers, 26–27 A Venetian Twilight, 1878 (plate 42, fig. 22), 96–97, 127

Works by Sanford Robinson A Home in the Wilderness, A Sketch, 1865–67 (plate 28), Ruins of the Parthenon, 1880 (fig. 27), 130 A Venetian Twilight, 1878 (plate 43), 98–99 Gifford 6, 68–69 Self-Portrait, November 1857 (plate 2, fig. 7), 17, 109 Baltimore, 1862—Twilight, 1862 (fig. 15), 121 Hook Mountain, near Nyack, New York, 1867 (plate 31), 75 works by other artists Siout, Egypt, 1869 (plate 33, fig. 20), 78–79, 125 Camping for the Night on Mansfield Mountain, early Hook Mountain on the Hudson River, 1867 (plate 30, Cotopaxi (by Frederic Edwin Church), 1862 (fig. 3), 105 1860s (plate 8), 28–29 fig. 25), 73, 129 A Sketch from North Mountain, in the Catskills, October 3, 1865 (plate 25), 62–63 The Golden Bough (by Joseph Mallord William Turner), The Catskill Mountain House, 1862 (plate 17, fig. 12), Hunter Mountain, Twilight, 1866 (fig. 16), 121 1834 (fig. 10), 111 46–47, 116 A Sketch in Kauterskill Clove, ca. 1861 (plate 12), 37 An Indian Summer’s Day on Claverack Creek, 1877–79 The Heart of the Andes (by Frederic Edwin Church), Claverack Creek, 1862 (plate 18), 48–49 (plate 39, fig. 26), 91, 129 A Sketch in the Wilderness, ca. 1860–61 (plate 10), 32–33 1859 (fig. 2), 104

The Column of St. Mark’s, Venice, 1870 (plate 34), 81 Kauterskill Clove, in the Catskills, 1862 (plate 15, fig. 5), A Sketch of the Beach at Manchester, Massachusetts, 1864 Lake George (by John Frederick Kensett), 1869 (fig. 4), 43, 106 (plate 24), 60–61 106 Coming Rain on Lake George, A Sketch, 1873 (plate 36), 84–85 Lake George, 1860 (plate 9), 30–31 A Sketch of Clay Bluffs on No Man’s Land, 1877 (plate 40, Landscape with Figures: A Scene from The Last of the fig. 28), 92–93, 131 Mohicans (by Thomas Cole), 1826 (fig. 18), 123 A Coming Shower, A Sketch, ca. 1865–67 (plate 27), 67 A Lake in the Wilderness at Sunset, 1861 (plate 11), detail 8, 34–35 A Sketch of Winter Twilight, 1862 (plate 13, fig. 14), Twilight in the Wilderness (by Frederic Edwin Church), A Coming Storm on Lake George, ca. 1863 (plate 19, detail 2, 38–39, 119 1860 (fig. 13), 118 fig. 17), 50–51, 122 Lake Nemi, 1856–57 (fig. 11), 112–113 The Statues of Memnon at Thebes, ca. 1872–78 (plate 35, Double Self-Portrait, June 1853 (plate 1, fig. 6), 15, 109 A Ledge in the Catskills, ca. 1865 (plate 26), 65 fig. 21), 83, 125

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