HAMILTON AUCTION GALLERIES

Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880)

One of the leading members of the second generation of the Hudson River School artists, and that particular subgroup known to the 20th century art historians as the as Luminists, Sanford Robinson Gifford was quietly brilliant in his unique and intimate depictions of his native Hudson river valley. At first in the 1840's he was a pupil of Henry Ary and then a follower of Thomas Cole, in both loose brushwork and dramatic style. However his artistic development advanced greatly in the 1850's with his trip to Europe. It was in Great Britain that he became familiar with the bombastic light of Joseph Mallord William Turner and yet in France and Italy Gifford followed a different path by developing an awareness of the subtle and intimate landscapes of Jean Baptiste Camille Corot. By the time Gifford returned to the United States around 1860 he had fully emerged from his artistic development as a master of suffused light and atmosphere, he was both dramatic, yet intimate.

Painted in 1864 at the peak of his powers, South Bay on the Hudson depicts a location very near and dear to Gifford's heart . Situated on the Hudson River a mile or two south of his hometown of Hudson, NY, the composition takes in Gifford's father's home atop Mount Merino on the left, then across the proverbial "Holy Grail" of American landscape painting, the Hudson River, are the Catskill Mountains on the right. The Catskills were where the American landscape painting school was born thirty nine years before this painting was done, as 1825 saw Thomas Cole first sketch there, and it was a locale that all of the leading Hudson River School artists to great pains to include in some of their greatest efforts on canvas. That this work was considered a superior effort is well reflected in its exhibition history, particularly in its inclusion in the Sanford Gifford Memorial Exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (#378) in the winter of 1880-1881.

On Gifford's military service 1861-1864

Sanford Robinson Gifford, not only was one of the early members of the Union League Club, but before that was in the Union Army of the Potomac, in an artistic capacity as a journalist. While many of the North, chaffed at the seeming inactivity (or paralysis) of the great Army of the Potomac, four of Gifford's 100 most important paintings chronicle daily life in the Army of the Potomac. Much of the early days of the War the Army spent its time readying itself for a Confederate invasion of Washington, DC, while waiting for an attack that never came, many of these early paintings of the Army of the Potomac depict its members in various states of idleness and boredom. The idea of depicting soldiers in various states and spectacles was an idea Gifford picked up in Europe while traveling. Ila Weiss writes of this very painting in her monograph on the artist, Poetic Experience, The Art and Experience of Sanford Gifford on page 227:

Some of the sketchbook studies of soldiers in various seated and reclining positions that were used for the Arlington Heights scene were also the models used for figures in a daylight view, Sunday Morning in the Camp of the Seventh Regiment Near Washington, DC. The yellow green open field of a parade ground, overlooking the metropolis on the Potomac in the blue haze in the distance, is the tree framed setting for sabbath services. Clusters of soldiers (several in exotic, red zouave dress, and others in the buff and gray of the earliest Union uniforms)... direct their attention to the black robed speaker at the flag-draped podium in front center. In Europe Gifford had an eye for spectacles in which many people were contained in a wide landscape or a large space. A military mass for veterans at "Les Invalides" was pronounced a touching sight." At the start of what was believed in the North to be a righteous war, the American counterpart of such a service, which touched many chroniclers of army life, was naturally of great interest to him.

The primary subjects of this painting were the members Seventh Regiment of New York. New York City at that time of 1862, before the creation of the Union League Club, was a hot bed of support for the southern secessionists. There were even proposals by the Democratic Mayor Fernando Wood for the City to secede and form with Long Island and Staten Island the Republic of Tri-Insula. That of course never happened, though before the Union elements were to retake control the city, more than a thousand were said to have died in the Draft riots. This period of chaos, and the backlash to it were a part of the historical context of the formation and growth of the Union League Club.

This painting was bought from the artist in 1871, and was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1881 as part of the Sanford Gifford Memorial Exhibition, click here to see that entire publication online). From 1868 to 1880 Gifford was a member of the Union League Club and served as a member of the art committee. In 2004 there was another exhibition on Gifford at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Kevin Avery writing the best work to date on the artist.

Other images by Gifford:

A Coming Storm Sanford Robinson Gifford 1863

A Coming Storm on Lake George Sanford Robinson Gifford circa 1863

A Forest Road Sanford Robinson Gifford circa 1860

A Gorge in the Mountains (aka Kauterskill Clove) Sanford Robinson Gifford 1862

A Home in the Wilderness Sanford Robinson Gifford 1866

A Lake Twilight Sanford Robinson Gifford 1861

A Mist Rising at Sunset in the Catskills Sanford Robinson Gifford circa 1861

A Moment's Rest Sanford Robinson Gifford Not listed

An Indian Summer's Day on the Hudson - Tappan Zee Sanford Robinson Gifford 1868

An October Afternoon Sanford Robinson Gifford 1871

A Passing Storm in the Adirondacks Sanford Robinson Gifford 1866