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)
- A Gorge in the Mountains (Kauterskill Clove) 1862
- Lake George from Buck Mountain
- Twilight on Hunter Mountain 1867
- Autumn, a Wood Path 1876
- Tivoli 1870
- Cows in a Pond at Sunset 1860
- A Home in the Wilderness 1866
- Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire 1860
- Rocks and Brook in the Catskills circa 1845-46
- Ruins of the Parthenon 1880
- Bethel ME 1859
- October in the Catskills 1880
- White Mountians from foot of Randolph Hill 1859
- Sketchbook, page 20： “Peak’s Island, ME, Sept. 7th, 59” 1859
- Sunset Over New York Bay 1873
- View of Venice 19th century
- Longs Peak, Colorado
- Twilight in the Catskills 1861
- Villa Malta, Rome 1879
- Haverstraw Bay 1868