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for Sanford Robinson Gifford
American, 1823 - 1880
The son of a well-to-do ironworks owner, Sanford Gifford grew up in Hudson, New York, near the home of Thomas Cole. After attending the Hudson Academy, he studied at Brown University from 1842 to 1844. Determined to become an artist, he left college for New York, where he took lessons in portrait painting from John Rubens Smith, was enrolled in the Academy's antique and life classes from 1846 into 1849, and studied anatomy at the Crosby Street Medical College. Time spent in the Catskill Mountains of New York, however, convinced the young artist to abandon figure painting and take up the study of landscape. Regular summer hikes in the mountains of the Northeast provided Gifford with his subjects, and he was soon selling works. His first appearance in an Academy annual exhibition was in 1847; he would show in the annuals every year, excepting 1869 and 1875, until his death.
Gifford left for Europe in 1855, spending two years in Great Britain, northern Europe, Switzerland, and Italy. During this trip he met Charles R. Leslie, Jean-François Millet, and John Ruskin and spent time with Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge. He was greatly impressed by the tonal unity of the Barbizon school of landscape painting; thereafter, he became increasingly sensitive to atmospheric effects. Upon his return to New York, Gifford moved into studio number 19 in the Tenth Street Studio Building, which he occupied for the rest of his life. His routine of summer fishing and sketching trips and winter studio work was broken only by the Civil War; he served in the Seventh Regiment, New York State National Guard, from 1861 to 1864. During the war he painted several military scenes, a genre he abandoned soon after.
The artist's second trip abroad occurred in 1868-69, when he visited Europe, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, and Greece. While traveling, he spent time with Frederic E. Church, Jervis McEntee, and George Yewell. On this journey the Academy entrusted him with one thousand French francs and assigned him to purchase photographs of drawings, paintings, and statues by the Old Masters for the school. The year after his return Gifford was traveling again-this time to Colorado and Wyoming with Whittredge, John F. Kensett, and the explorer Ferdinand V. Hayden. He returned to the West in 1874, visiting San Francisco and journeying as far north as Alaska.
In 1875 Gifford's genial relationship with the Academy and most of its members was temporarily marred when he resigned in protest of a policy that excluded one of his paintings from the annual exhibition. The painting in question had already received a semiprivate viewing at a New York club. Thus, according to strict interpretation of the Academy constitution, which forbade works previously seen in New York from being accepted into its exhibitions, the work was ineligible for display. The dispute seems to have been based on principle rather than animosity, for exactly one week after he resigned, the ever-generous Gifford contributed $500 to the Academy's Mortgage Fund. At the annual meeting held within a month of the exhibition opening, the Academicians publicly asked him to withdraw his resignation, which he apparently did.
Gifford married in 1877, at age fifty-four. Three years later he became ill while on a trip to Lake Superior and was brought back to New York, where he died. His death was seen as a tragedy for American art. He was memorialized by the publication of a series of addresses given at the Century Association (1880), the organization of a large retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1881), and the compilation of a catalogue raisonné (1881).
Gifford left for Europe in 1855, spending two years in Great Britain, northern Europe, Switzerland, and Italy. During this trip he met Charles R. Leslie, Jean-François Millet, and John Ruskin and spent time with Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge. He was greatly impressed by the tonal unity of the Barbizon school of landscape painting; thereafter, he became increasingly sensitive to atmospheric effects. Upon his return to New York, Gifford moved into studio number 19 in the Tenth Street Studio Building, which he occupied for the rest of his life. His routine of summer fishing and sketching trips and winter studio work was broken only by the Civil War; he served in the Seventh Regiment, New York State National Guard, from 1861 to 1864. During the war he painted several military scenes, a genre he abandoned soon after.
The artist's second trip abroad occurred in 1868-69, when he visited Europe, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, and Greece. While traveling, he spent time with Frederic E. Church, Jervis McEntee, and George Yewell. On this journey the Academy entrusted him with one thousand French francs and assigned him to purchase photographs of drawings, paintings, and statues by the Old Masters for the school. The year after his return Gifford was traveling again-this time to Colorado and Wyoming with Whittredge, John F. Kensett, and the explorer Ferdinand V. Hayden. He returned to the West in 1874, visiting San Francisco and journeying as far north as Alaska.
In 1875 Gifford's genial relationship with the Academy and most of its members was temporarily marred when he resigned in protest of a policy that excluded one of his paintings from the annual exhibition. The painting in question had already received a semiprivate viewing at a New York club. Thus, according to strict interpretation of the Academy constitution, which forbade works previously seen in New York from being accepted into its exhibitions, the work was ineligible for display. The dispute seems to have been based on principle rather than animosity, for exactly one week after he resigned, the ever-generous Gifford contributed $500 to the Academy's Mortgage Fund. At the annual meeting held within a month of the exhibition opening, the Academicians publicly asked him to withdraw his resignation, which he apparently did.
Gifford married in 1877, at age fifty-four. Three years later he became ill while on a trip to Lake Superior and was brought back to New York, where he died. His death was seen as a tragedy for American art. He was memorialized by the publication of a series of addresses given at the Century Association (1880), the organization of a large retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1881), and the compilation of a catalogue raisonné (1881).
