National Gallery of Art :: The Collection :: The Artist Sketching at Mount Desert, Maine
  • Inscription
  • Provenance
  • Exhibition History
  • Bibliography

Overview

No overview.

Inscription

lower right: S R Gifford / 1865 / mt. [?] / July 22, 1864

Marks and Labels

null

Provenance

The artist; possibly (sale, Artists' Fund Society by Leeds & Miner, New York, 29 December 1865, no. 50, as Green Mountain, Mt. Desert); Graham.[1] Possibly John Frederick Kensett [1816-1872], New York.[2] Possibly Miss A.M. Williams, Augusta, Maine, in 1881.[3] Lee Freedman, Southwest Harbor, Maine, in 1978. (Thomas Colville, New Haven); purchased 1979 by Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr., Los Angeles;[4] gift (partial and promised) 2004 to NGA.

[1] Annotated copy of the sale catalogue, microfilm roll N429, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

[2] A painting titled A Study from Nature--Mt. Desert, included in the 1873 exhibition of works owned by Kensett, may be the NGA painting.

[3] A painting titled A View from Green Mountain, Mount Desert, Me. and owned by Miss Williams, which may be the NGA painting, was listed in A Memorial Catalogue of the Paintings of Sanford Robinson Gifford, N.A., with a Biographical and Critical Essay by Prof. John F. Weir, of the Yale School of Fine Arts, [Waldo S. Pratt], New York, 1881: no. 385.

[4] Provenance information for the late 1970s is from the 1981 catalogue for the exhibition of the Ganz collection.

Exhibition History

1865
Possibly Boston Athenaeum, 1865, no. 245, as From the Green Mountains--Mt. Desert.
1873
Possibly The Collection of Paintings of the Late Mr. John F. Kensett, National Academy of Design, New York, 1873, no. 789, as A Study from Nature--Mt. Desert.
1981
An American Perspective. Nineteenth-Century Art from the collection of Jo Ann & Julian Ganz, Jr., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Amon Carter Museum, Forth Worth; Los Angeles Museum of Art, 1981-1982, unnumbered catalogue, fig. 18.
1998
The Painted Sketch: American Impressions from Nature 1830-1880, Dallas Museum of Art; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, 1998-1999, no. 60, repro.
1999
Inventing Acadia: Artists and Tourists at Mount Desert, The Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine, 1999, unnumbered catalogue, fig. 67.
2003
Hudson River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2003-2004, no. 39, repro.

Bibliography

1881
Weir, John F. A Memorial Catalogue of the Paintings of Sanford Robinson Gifford, N.A., New York, 1881: no. 365, as A View from Green Mountain, Mount Desert, Me..
1979
The Magazine Antiques 116 (November 1979): 948, repro.
1985
Brown, Hilton. "Unfamiliar Views and Distant Lands: How Ten Artists Composed Design Elements to Make Interesting Paintings." American Artist (November 1985): 530-531, repro.
1987
Weiss, Ila. Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experience of Sanford R. Gifford. Newark, 1987: 246-247, pl. 20.
1991
Wilmerding, John. American Views: Essays on American Art. Princeton, 1991: 5, color pl. 1, fig. 2.
1994
Wilmerding 1994, 131-133, fig. 132, frontispiece.
1995
Avery, Kevin J. The Panorama and Its Manifestation in American Landscape Painting, 1795-1870. Ph.D dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 1995: 361-363, fig. 171.
1998
Harvey, Eleanor Lewis Jones. "That Earlier, Wilder Image": Oil Sketches by American Landscape Painters, 1830-1880. Ph.D dissertation, Yale University, 1998. New Haven, 1998: 70-71, fig. 17.
1999
Katlan, Alexander. "The American Artist's Tools and Materials for On-Site Oil Sketching." Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 38, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 22.
2000
Belanger, Pamela J. Maine in America: American Art at The Farnsworth Art Museum. Rockland, Maine, 2000: 60.
2000
Skrapits, Joseph C. "Sacred Scenery." American Artist 64, no. 692 (March 2000): 26, 78, repro.

Related Works

Related Resources

  • Event Type
    Event Name
    March 1–June 1
    Mon, Tues, and Wed at 1:00
    March 5, 2012 at 2:00
    March 7, 2012 at 4:00
    East Building, Auditorium
    Name of docent
    image:
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum
    60 minutes
    Registration for this event begins on April 1, 2012 at noon.
    Register for this event
    Download the program notes (100k)
  • Self-Guided Tour
    Italian Collection
    image:
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum