Sketch on the Roman Campagna

Sanford Gifford embarked on a European sojourn with fellow artist Jervis McEntee in May 1868, eventually landing in Rome where other contemporaries such as Frederic Church converged to sketch and paint the fascinating scenery. A week-long sketching trip in Tivoli on the Roman Campagna inspired Gifford to paint his major exhibition piece Tivoli (1869, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). This trip also inspired the present work, as Gifford scholar Ila Weiss writes, "During this period Gifford was on the alert for lavish combinations of color...on the Via Appia Nuova, he made notes on 'a "stunning" piece of color' that dazzled his eye and inspired his brush: a cardinal's carriage and figures, intensely colored, 'illuminated by the richest horizontal light of sunset,' against a neutral ground." (Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experience of Sanford R. Gifford, Newark, Delaware, 1987, p. 119)