The Riverside

Ila Weiss writes, "This painting is undoubtedly a study for Gifford's National Academy of Design exhibition piece of 1854, The River Bank. The painting is typical of Gifford's work of the early fifties in its separation of foreground and distance by means of color: warm, brownish hues and strong highlights and shadows in the foreground; cool, grayed blues and greens unifying the aerial distance. It is also interesting for its romantic mood, conveyed by a couple lounging on the foreground bank. . . Such couples (and elsewhere parent and child) in some of Gifford's paintings convey the bachelor-artist's longing for female companionship and domesticity which was also expressed in a number of his letters."

A letter from Dr. Ila Weiss discussing the painting accompanies the lot.