1823 -1880 · Hudson River School and atmospheric landscape

American valleys, European mountains and hanging lights made Sanford Robinson Gifford one of the great painters of air and atmosphere in the 19th century.

Sanford Robinson Gifford was born in Greenfield, New York, in 1823 and died in New York in 1880. After two years at Brown University, he chose painting and studied with John Rubens Smith. First trained in portraiture, he turned to landscape under the influence of Thomas Cole and joined the second generation of the Hudson River School. His excursions in the Catskills and Berkshires introduced him to working on the motif. Between 1855 and 1857, he traveled Europe, studied Turner in London, met Ruskin and stayed in Italy. He then developed a language where diffused light seemed to shape space more surely than drawing. Morning in the Hudson, Haverstraw Bay transforms the river into a calm expanse shrouded in luminous mist. His mountain landscapes build depth through colorful plans, atmospheric sails and a horizon often bathed in gold. During the Civil War, Gifford served in the New York National Guard and designed the camps and movements. A second major trip in 1868 -1869 took him to Egypt, Turkey, Greece and Venice. A second major trip in 1868 -1869 took him to Egypt, Turkey, Greece and Venice. Founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1870, after his death he received the institution's first monographic retrospective. The commemorative catalog of 1881 lists 735 works, without exhausting his studies and notebooks. The "Sanford Robinson Gifford" selection lists 735 works, without exhausting his studies and notebooks. The "Sanford Robinson Gifford" selection lists particularly in relation to Self-portrait and Landscape. His reading favors light.

Gifford not only fills the landscape with light: he makes the atmosphere the true architecture of the painting.