Sanford Robinson Gifford 1823 - 1880

Estate of the artist (sold: Thomas E. Kirby & Co., New York, April 28 and 29, 1881, lot 62)
Mr. Richards (acquired at the above sale)
Carl and Catherine Whitbeck, New York
Whitbeck family, New York
Adams Davidson Galleries, Washington, D.C., 1980
Private collection, Midwest (acquired from the above)
By descent to the present owner

Chicago, Illinois, Terra Museum of American Art, Solitude: Inner Visions in American Art, September-December 1982, no. 4

A Memorial Catalogue of the Paintings of Sanford Robinson Gifford, N.A., New York, 1881, no. 405, p. 31
Ila Weiss, Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880), Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1968, p. 244
Kevin J. Avery, et al., American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1987, p. 229
Kevin J. Avery and Franklin Kelly, eds., Hudson River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford, New York, 2003, pp. 43, 80, 176, illustrated fig. 114

Sanford Robinson Gifford’s A Sketch of Hunter Mountain, Twilight is one of two preparatory canvases for the artist’s highly acclaimed Hunter Mountain, Twilight (1866, 30 1/2 x 54 in., Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, Chicago, Illinois). Gifford's work was fundamentally rooted in and inspired by his direct observations from nature. In the fall of 1865, he embarked on a sketching campaign throughout the Catskills, and, as was his practice, made a small, quick pencil drawing of this scene to record his immediate impressions. This, along with the oil studies, served as the points of departure for the larger studio composition. Kevin J. Avery writes, “In a seventeen-inch-wide study dated October 9, 1865 [the present work]—executed only weeks, at most, after the drawing—Gifford embellished the foreground, inserting more stones among the stumps, and introduced the narrow streamlet for the cows. This reflective accent in the terrain helped clarify the diagonal spatial progression of the left foreground to the dwelling in the middle distance at the right” (Hudson River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford, New York, 2003, p. 176).

Upon observing the final work in the 1866 annual exhibition at the National Academy of Design, a critic for the New York Post wrote that the painting, “best expresses the intensity and disciplined strength of Mr. Gifford’s genius. A more perfect piece of mountain drawing, or a more wonderful rendering of the lovely and intense color of a mountain form at twilight, we have never seen. …Certainly Mr. Gifford knows the mountain, and he has expressed with intensity and grace the solemnity of the color and the beauty of his subject” (American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1987, pp. 229-30).