A Sketch from Nature on the Hudson, ca. 1876

Provenance

Estate of the artist
Sale, Thos E. Kirby & Co., New York, New York, April 11 and 12, 1881, no. 91
Thomas Colville Fine Art, Guilford, Connecticut
Dr. Christopher MacLaughlin, Woodbridge, Connecticut, 1981

Exhibited

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, The Memorial Collection of the Works of the Late Sanford R. Gifford, October 20, 1880–April 1, 1881, no. 475.
Chickering Hall, New York, New York, Works of the Famous Artist, Sanford R. Gifford…, April 1881, no. 91.

Literature

Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Dr. John F. Weir, A Memorial Catalogue of the Paintings of Sanford Robinson Gifford, N.A… (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1881), 34, no. 475.
Thos E. Kirby & Co, and John F. Weir, Catalogue of Valuable Oil Paintings, Works for the Famous Artist, Sanford R. Gifford, N.A… (Thomas E. Kirby & Co., 1881), 36, no. 91.
Ila Weiss, Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experience of Sanford R. Gifford (University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses, 1987), 148, 307, illustrated.
Kevin J. Avery, and Franklin Kelly, eds., Hudson River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), 229.

Related Work

The Marshes of the Hudson, 1878, oil on canvas, 16 1/2 x 30 1/4 inches; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine

Note

Dr. Ila Weiss dates this work to October 1876, when Gifford painted subjects local to the New York City area. She notes the works “mixture of clouds and sunshine create[ing] the shifting values of a shadowed foreground of marsh grass and water, freely brushed; a middle distance of brightly sunlit grass at the right, backed by a wide band of dark woods; and sky-reflecting water at the left, bounded by the analogous form of Hook Mountain, sheltering a few sails.”[1]

[1] Weiss, Poetic Landscape, 307.