Sanford Robinson Gifford

American, 1823 - 1880

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American painter (1823–1880)

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Artwork

A view across a wide, brightly lit field scattered with broken pieces of stone is framed to the left and right by crumbling stone temples in this horizontal painting. The sunlight is infused with a soft pink glow, which warms the cream-white stone with a pale blush. The temple on our left sits on a low rise, and a row of at least nine columns topped with an entablature faces our right. Several of the columns are broken off, and part of the entablature and the entire roof is missing, from what we can see. Fragments of pediments and wheel-like sections of columns tumble down from its front steps and back along its side, cascading into and across most of the field before us. The rocky terrain is carpeted in celery-green growth speckled with sage green and areas of rust red in the lower left and right corners. Barely visible in the center of the field, are two men, barely taller than the fragments they inspect. One man wears an apricot-orange suit and bowler hat over blond hair. He kneels with his back to us as he writes or sketches on a piece of paper. A second man stands to his right, also with his back to us, dressed in a long pleated, white tunic with a red cap, jacket, and knee-high boots. To our right and farther back than the other temple, a brick-red tower stands next to another columned arcade. A third temple there, or perhaps another part of that building complex, has columns carved into the shape of six identical, robed women, facing our left. Beyond the ruins, the field slopes down to a peach-colored plain that ends at a wide, topaz-blue body of water with mountains in the far distance along the low horizon line. A petal-pink haze rises from the water and mountains and almost fills the blue-gray sky above. The artist has signed and dated the painting in the lower left, “S.R. Gifford 1880.” — Sanford Robinson Gifford, Ruins of the Parthenon, 1880, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2014.79.20

Ruins of the Parthenon

Sanford Robinson Gifford · 1880 · oil on canvas · Accession ID 2014.79.20

Artwork

Siout, Egypt

Sanford Robinson Gifford · 1874 · oil on canvas · Accession ID 1999.7.1

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Sidon

Sanford Robinson Gifford · c. 1868/1869 · graphite on greenish wove paper · Accession ID 1980.69.1

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Two Pears on a Tabletop

Sanford Robinson Gifford · c. 1866 · oil on canvas · Accession ID 2001.130.1

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A man sits on a sheer, rocky outcropping high above a sunlit expanse of land that stretches to meet a sun-dappled sea in this horizontal painting. The outcropping slopes in to fill the right half of the composition, and is partially carpeted by mustard-yellow, brown, and moss-green growth. Bright sunlight from the upper right glints off some of the craggy, steel-gray rock faces. The man is tiny in scale within the composition, and sits near the top right with his legs stretched out in front of him. He wears a denim-blue shirt, tan pants, and soft hat with a narrow brim. He appears to have red hair and a beard. He holds a white object in front of him, presumably paper or a notebook. Behind him an open box of paints and brushes sits near a camp stool with a closed white parasol planted next to it. A lower hill in the middle distance slopes in from the left side and disappears behind the outcroppingin the center of the composition. The hill is covered with muted and dark greens and yellows, suggesting a forest of pine trees. The hill descends to meet the flat, mauve-tinted land, which is crisscrossed with shallow fissures. In the distance, the area where the narrow band of powder-blue sea meets the sky, about three-quarters of the way up the canvas, is painted with a tan-colored haze. The artist signed the work in the lower right as if he had carved his name and the date into the rock. It reads, “S R Gifford 1865.” — Sanford Robinson Gifford, The Artist Sketching at Mount Desert, Maine, 1864-1865, oil on canvas, Gift of Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr. in honor of John Wilmerding, 2004.99.1

The Artist Sketching at Mount Desert, Maine

Sanford Robinson Gifford · 1864-1865 · oil on canvas · Accession ID 2004.99.1

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Autograph Etchings by American Artists

Peter C. Duchochois, W. A. Townsend & Company, John Whetten Ehninger, Asher Brown Durand, Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, John Frederick Kensett, Felix Octavius Carr Darley, John William Casilear, Eastman Johnson, Sanford Robinson Gifford, George Cochran Lambdin, George Henry Boughton, William Parsons Winchester Dana, Louis Rémy Mignot · 1859 · bound volume with twelve cliché-verre on albumen paper after various artists · Accession ID 2018.44.73