Sanford Robinson Gifford
Master of luminist light and atmosphere
Sanford Robinson Gifford was an American landscape painter and one of the leading members of the Hudson River School. Gifford’s landscapes are known for their emphasis on light and soft atmospheric effects, and he is regarded as a practitioner of Luminism, an offshoot style of the Hudson River School. Gifford was born in Greenfield, New York and spent his childhood in Hudson, New York, the son of an iron foundry owner. He attended Brown University 1842-44, where he joined Delta Phi, before leaving to study art in New York City in 1845. He studied drawing, perspective and anatomy under the direction of the British watercolorist and drawing-master, John Rubens Smith. He also studied the human figure in anatomy classes at the Crosby Street Medical college and took drawing classes at the National Academy of Design. By 1847 he was sufficiently skilled at painting to exhibit his first landscape at the National Academy and was elected an associate in 1851, an academician in 1854. Thereafter Gifford devoted himself to landscape painting, becoming one of the finest artists of the early Hudson River School.
Relationship Network
Master student
- John Rubens Smith Master
Artworks by this artist (56 total)
- Sunset Over New York Bay 1873
- Autumn, a Wood Path 1876
- Sketchbook, page 20： “Peak’s Island, ME, Sept. 7th, 59” 1859
- Lake George from Buck Mountain
- Riva, Lago di Garda 1863
- Ruins of the Parthenon 1880
- A Gorge in the Mountains (Kauterskill Clove) 1862
- The Darent River, Kent, England 1856
- Whiteface Mountain from Lake Placid
- Sundown 1863
- Indian Summer in the White Mountains 1862
- A Home in the Wilderness 1866
- Hook Mountain, Near Nyack, on the Hudson 1866
- Mountain Landscape 19th century
- October in the Catskills 1880
- Bethel ME 1859
- Wilderness 1860
- The Trapps, Shawangunk Mountains 1850
- Tivoli 1870
- Man Seated in Hitchcock Chair 1854