Questroyal 2009

Sanford Robinson Gifford ( 1823 – 1880 ) Plate 17 Mountain Lake Oil on canvas 12 1 / 8 x 10 inches Signed lower right: S R Gifford provenance Estate of the artist Estate of Julia Gifford Estate of Charles Frazier Maurice, great-nephew of Sanford Robinson Gifford By descent in the family related work Sanford Robinson Gifford, Lake Scene, 1861 , oil on canvas, 6 1 / 8 x 8 1 / 2 inches, initialed and dated lower left: SRG 61 . Whereabouts unknown. 1 note The artist’s family reports that this work was possibly executed at Echo Lake in Franconia in the New Hampshire mountains. His pictures seemed to palpitate with light. No other artist equaled him in the power of expressing the atmospheric effects which are characteristic of his work. Harper’sWeekly, 1880 2 S. R. Gifford Alone In December 1863 an anonymous critic from The Round Table , a popular nineteenth-century periodical, took as his or her assignment the descrip- tion of “American Genius as Expressed in Art.” 3 The critic asserted that Gifford, Kensett, and Church were representative of American genius in landscape. Describing their contributions, this writer added: “They have shown little or no sympathy with the tragic or grand element of life and nature, and, with the exception of S. R. Gifford, no feeling for its consuming splendor and intensity. Mr. S. R. Gifford alone has given us something approaching to the magnificent, the opulent, and the intense in nature.” 4 Anyone familiar with Gifford’s oeuvre may be shocked by this statement; after all, he is primarily known for tranquil “air” paintings of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains. Nevertheless, Gifford did experiment and paint sublime nature as seen in his 1861 masterpiece A Twilight in the Catskills (private collection). Mountain Lake , with its swirling, enveloping clouds and dark, ominous palette, forms part of this group. In addition to these details, the painting encompasses a jagged crag backlit by a blinding sun and autumnal trees that seem to overpower and converge on a Native American figure that drifts in a canoe across the foreground. With its dra- matic elements and image of imposing nature, Mountain Lake shares the romantic and sublime components of Gifford’s work praised by The Round Table ’s critic. –– jlw Gifford’s works are featured in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Art Institute of Chicago, and Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid. 1 Viewable in Sanford R. Gifford , exh. cat. (NewYork: Alexander Gallery, 1986 ), no. 18 . 2 “Sanford R. Gifford,” Harper’sWeekly 9 , no. 18 (September 18, 1880 ): 605 . 3 “American Genius as Expressed in Art.” The Round Table, A Saturday Review of Politics, Finance, Literature, Society and Art 1 , no. 2 (December 26, 1863 ): 21 – 22 . 4 Ibid. 5 “Article VIII .—American Landscape Painters.” New Englander 32 , no. 122 (January 1873 ): 145 .