Marina Grande, Capri, with Figures, 1857
by Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–1880)4 15/16 x 4⅞ inches
Information
Provenance
Estate of the artist
Mrs. Sanford R. Gifford, San Francisco, California
Sanford Gifford, MD, Cambridge, Massachusetts, by descent from above
Private collection, by descent from above
[With] Menconi & Schoelkopf, New York, New York
Exhibited
Michael Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services, New York, New York, An Artist’s Legacy and A Dealer’s Admiration: Paintings by Sanford Robinson Gifford from Important American Collections, October 12–December 14, 2012, no. 5 (as Marina Grande, Capri)
Literature
Ila Weiss, “Sanford Robinson Gifford” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1968), 155–156, plate V F 6.
Ila Weiss, Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experience of Sanford R. Gifford (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1987), 79, 200, 203 (as Marina Grande, Capri).
Kevin J. Avery and Donald J. Christensen, An Artist’s Legacy and A Dealer’s Admiration: Paintings by Sanford Robinson Gifford from Important American Collections (New York: Michael Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services, 2012), 22–23, no. 5 (as Marina Grande, Capri).
Related Work
Mount Vesuvius from Marina Grande, Capri, 1857, oil on paper laid down on canvas, 9⅛ x 14 inches, inscribed, dated, and initialed lower left: Marina Grande June 20th 1857 SRG; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
Note: Gifford’s first extended visit to Europe was in 1855, and in the spring of 1857 he traveled with Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) to Naples, Capri, and the Amalfi Coast. This painting, like the related work at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, shows Mount Vesuvius in the distance from the same vantage point. Gifford climbed the mountain in May 1857, describing it as follows: “We had a magnificent sunrise over the Appennines . . . From [the peak] is a grand panorama . . . Capri (20 miles distant) gleamed like a jewel on the blue sea as the horizontal rays lighted its bright cliffs.”[1] Gifford and Bierstadt took a boat from Naples, arriving on Capri on May 30, 1857, where they remained until June 26, “sketching boats, figures etc….[they took] a bath in the bright sea every day.”[2]
Artist Biography
Prominent Luminist Hudson River School painter
By Amy Spencer
Defining the salient characteristics of the second-generation Hudson River School, Sanford R. Gifford’s luminist style effectively evoked both the subtle and dramatic effects epitomized by landscape painting in nineteenth-century America.
I. Biography
II. Chronology
III. Collections
IV. Exhibitions
V. Memberships
VI. Notes
VII. Suggested Resources
I. Biography
The second-generation Hudson River School painter Sanford Robinson Gifford was a master at depicting light and atmosphere in landscapes. As the only painter among his contemporaries to be born and grow up
