Sketch on the Roman Campagna

Details

SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD (1823-1880)
Sketch on the Roman Campagna
bears artist's estate stamp (on the reverse)
oil on canvas laid down on panel
3 ½ x 7 ¼ in. (8.9 x 18.4 cm.)
Painted in 1868.

Provenance

The artist.
Estate of the above.
Private collection, by 1987.
Berry-Hill Galleries, New York.
Private collection, Atlanta, Georgia.
Christie's, New York, 5 December 2002, lot 33, sold by the above.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Literature

Memorial Catalogue of the Paintings of Sanford Robinson Gifford, N.A., 1881, p. 36, no. 517.
I. Weiss, Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experience of Sanford R. Gifford, Newark, Delaware, 1987, pp. 119, 271, pl. 24, illustrated.

Exhibited

New York, Alexander Gallery, Sanford R. Gifford, March 20-April 19, 1986, no. 33, illustrated.
Dallas, Texas, Dallas Museum of Art; Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art; Williamstown, Massachusetts, The Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, The Painted Sketch: American Impressions from Nature, 1830-1880, June 21-September 20, 1998, no. 61.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

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)

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