Mount Etna from Catania, 1868
by Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–1880)8 x 13 9/16 inches
Information
Provenance
Estate of the artist
Sanford Gifford, MD, Cambridge, Massachusetts, by descent from above
Private collection, by descent from above
Exhibited
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, Loan Collection of Paintings in the West and East Galleries, October 1880–March 1881, no. 83 (as Catania, a study)
Marshall Field & Company Picture Galleries, Chicago, Illinois
Michael Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services, New York, New York, An Artist’s Legacy and A Dealer’s Admiration: Paintings by Sanford Robinson Gifford from Important American Collections, October 12–December 14, 2012, no. 32
Literature
Loan Collection of Paintings in the West and East Galleries (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, 1880), 8, no. 83 (as Catania, a study).
Ila Weiss, “Sanford R. Gifford in Europe: A Sketchbook of 1868,” American Art Journal 9, no. 2 (1977): 97.
Ila Weiss, Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experience of Sanford R. Gifford (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1987), 118, 269.
Kevin J. Avery and Donald J. Christensen, An Artist’s Legacy and A Dealer’s Admiration: Paintings by Sanford Robinson Gifford from Important American Collections (New York: Michael Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services, 2012), 76–77, 124–125, no. 32.
Related Work
Sunset at Catania, Sicily, 10 September 1868, oil on canvas, 7⅝ x 13½ inches; Private collection, as reproduced in Ila Weiss, Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experience of Sanford R. Gifford (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1987), 270.
Note: This work presents the view from Gifford’s hotel window under a high sun in Catania, Sicily, on September 11, 1868. The previous evening, he painted the mountain at sunset. He never made a final larger painting of this subject.
Artist Biography
Prominent Luminist Hudson River School painter
By Amy Spencer
Defining the salient characteristics of the second-generation Hudson River School, Sanford R. Gifford’s luminist style effectively evoked both the subtle and dramatic effects epitomized by landscape painting in nineteenth-century America.
I. Biography
II. Chronology
III. Collections
IV. Exhibitions
V. Memberships
VI. Notes
VII. Suggested Resources
I. Biography
The second-generation Hudson River School painter Sanford Robinson Gifford was a master at depicting light and atmosphere in landscapes. As the only painter among his contemporaries to be born and grow up
