Sanford Robinson Gifford 1823 - 1880

Estate of the artist (sold: Gifford Estate Sale, Thomas E. Kirby and Co., New York, April 28-29, 1881, no. 106)
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1971
Acquired by the present owners from the above, 1971

Santa Barbara, California, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, American Paintings Watercolors and Drawings from the Collection of Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr., June-July 1973, no. 31, illustrated
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; Fort Worth, Texas, Amon Carter Museum; Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, An American Perspective: Nineteenth-Century Art from the Collection of Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr., October 1981-September 1982, p. 130-131, illustrated p. 28
Dallas, Texas, Dallas Museum of Art; Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art; Williamstown, Massachusetts, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, The Painted Sketch: American Impressions from Nature 1830-1880, June 1998-May 1999, no. 52, p. 205, illustrated in color p. 206

(probably) 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, New York, 1881, reprinted 1974, no. 327, p. 17
Ila Weiss, Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880), New York, 1977, p. xii-xiii, xxxii-xxxiii
Susan Strickler, The Toledo Museum of Art: American Paintings, Toledo, Ohio, 1979, p. 54
Ila Weiss, Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experience of Sanford Robinson Gifford, Newark, Delaware, 1987, p. 76, 197, illustrated in color p. 6
Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., The Lure of Italy: American Artists and The Italian Experience, New York, 1992, illustrated p. 298

Very good condition, unlined. Under UV: a few scattered minor dots and dashes of retouching
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In early October 1856, during his first European tour, Sanford Gifford traveled south from Rome along the Appian Way to Gensano, located on the west side of Lake Nemi. He described the lake as "a deep cavity in the mountains (over the crater of a volcano), [which] is fringed with fine trees which droop into its waters; back of these rise the lofty banks, in parts richly wooded, in parts showing the bare cliffs." He arrived at the town of Nemi, "a very picturesque little village which is hung over the cliffs," during the afternoon of October 7th and completed a series of pencil sketches of the lake in his notebook before arranging a hotel room for the night.

Gifford recorded his impressions of the view from his hotel window as "one of the most beautiful I have ever seen ... We were high up above the lake. On one side in the foreground were some picturesque houses and ruined walls – a tall, dark cypress, rising out of a rich mass of foliage, cut strongly against the lake, distance and sky. Far below, the still lake reflected the full moon, and the heights of the further shore which, crested by the walls of the Campanile of Gensano, were relieved richly against the light and misty expanse of the Campagna, while still farther beyond, a long line of silver light, the reflection of the moon, told where the sea was."

Gifford made at least two oil sketches of the lake before he returned to Rome later that month. His typical method was to work up progressively larger oil sketches of his pencil drawings before completing the final canvas. In this case, his studies lead to one of Gifford's most significant paintings, Lake Nemi, now in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art, and at the top of Gifford's "List of Some of My Chief Pictures." Dated October 7th, the first known small oil sketch of the scene, at 7 by 10 inches, was likely completed on site. The vibrant staccato brushwork and varied palette in this initial sketch are distictive to the artist's plein-air work. The present work, dated October 21^st, was probably painted in Gifford's Rome studio. Typical of the artist's intermediate studies, Lake Nemi strongly resembles the final picture in both compositional arrangement and surface treatment. Gifford used this study to solidify his palette, enveloping the landscape in the soft, hazy glow would come to characterize his finished paintings. As Kevin Avery has pointed out in the 2004 exhibition catalogue Hudson River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford, "Lake Nemi was the first major painting by Gifford to incorporate what became nearly a trademark of his art – the setting sun as a radiant focal point, its light a tonal unifier of his compositions" (p. 103).