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Lot Essay
Painted in 1861, Indian Summer depicts a wilderness scene of distant peaks glimpsed across a still and mirror-like lake. Along the thickly forested shore, the artist places a cluster of tepees on a small promontory, along with several Indians and canoes. The entire landscape is bathed in the rich, atmospheric light for which the artist was celebrated even in his day.
His friend and fellow artist J. Ferguson Weir wrote in 1880 that "Gifford loved the light. His finest impressions were those derived from the landscape when the air is charged with an effulgence of irruptive and glowing light." (J. K. Howat, et al, American Paradise, The World of the Hudson River School, New York, 1988, p. 220) Gifford's contemporary Henry T. Tuckerman called the artist "a noble interpreter of American scenery," and praised his idealization of the wilderness, and his elevation of landscape painting to a higher, even poetic plane. "His best pictures, " Tuckerman wrote, "can be not merely seen but contemplated with entire satisfaction...they do not dazzle, they win; they appeal to our calm and thoughtful appreciation; they minister to our most gentle and gracious sympathies, to our most tranquil and congenial observation." (Book of the Artists, New York, 1967, p.524-5)
More recent historians have also found the brilliant light in Gifford's art to be the central aspect of his oeuvre, and the one which unifies his work with the other artists of his time. "Atmosphere," writes one historian, "--the palpable representation of space, with its sublimated contents, so emphasized by Durand in his 'Letters on Landscape Painting' as the sign of true mastery of the landscape art--is the indissoluble link that connects the Luminism of Kensett, Heade, and Gifford with the Hudson River School." (American Paradise, p. 47).
With the signal characteristics of Gifford's best luminist landscapes, Indian Summer represents a high-point of his art. It also conveys Gifford's avowed aim of his earliest days, to capture the essential nature of the "forest primeval," the untouched American wilderness.
His friend and fellow artist J. Ferguson Weir wrote in 1880 that "Gifford loved the light. His finest impressions were those derived from the landscape when the air is charged with an effulgence of irruptive and glowing light." (J. K. Howat, et al, American Paradise, The World of the Hudson River School, New York, 1988, p. 220) Gifford's contemporary Henry T. Tuckerman called the artist "a noble interpreter of American scenery," and praised his idealization of the wilderness, and his elevation of landscape painting to a higher, even poetic plane. "His best pictures, " Tuckerman wrote, "can be not merely seen but contemplated with entire satisfaction...they do not dazzle, they win; they appeal to our calm and thoughtful appreciation; they minister to our most gentle and gracious sympathies, to our most tranquil and congenial observation." (Book of the Artists, New York, 1967, p.524-5)
More recent historians have also found the brilliant light in Gifford's art to be the central aspect of his oeuvre, and the one which unifies his work with the other artists of his time. "Atmosphere," writes one historian, "--the palpable representation of space, with its sublimated contents, so emphasized by Durand in his 'Letters on Landscape Painting' as the sign of true mastery of the landscape art--is the indissoluble link that connects the Luminism of Kensett, Heade, and Gifford with the Hudson River School." (American Paradise, p. 47).
With the signal characteristics of Gifford's best luminist landscapes, Indian Summer represents a high-point of his art. It also conveys Gifford's avowed aim of his earliest days, to capture the essential nature of the "forest primeval," the untouched American wilderness.