Study for a Winter Twilight, 1862

Provenance

(Possibly) William P. Wright, New Jersey, 1862

(Possibly) Sale, Leeds Art Gallery, New York, New York, W. P. Wright Collection, March 18, 1867

(Possibly) John Bogert

Donald and Margaret Thomson Loeber, New Jersey, 1947

Estate of Donald and Margaret Thomson Loeber

De Kovessey Family

Michael Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services, LLC, New York, New York

Private collection, acquired from above, 2009

Exhibited

Michael Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services, New York, New York, An Artist’s Legacy and a Dealer’s Admiration: Paintings by Sanford R. Gifford from Important American Collections, October 12–December 14, 2012 (as A Sketch of Winter Twilight)

Literature

(Possibly) Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists. American Artist Life, Comprising Biographical and Critical Sketches of American Artists: Preceded by an Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of Art in America (New York: G. P. Putnam & Son, 1867), 525–26. (as First Skating of the Season)

(Possibly) A Memorial Catalogue of the Painting of Sanford Robinson Gifford, N. A. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1881), 24, no. 257. (as A Sketch of Winter Twilight)

Ila Weiss, Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experiences of Sanford R. Gifford (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987), 229.

Hudson River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), 145.

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, LLC, 2012), 38–39, 118–120, fig. 14.

Related Work

Winter Twilight, 1862, oil on canvas, 15½ x 30 1/16 inches, signed and dated lower right; Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

Note: This painting is one of two oil studies listed in the Gifford Memorial Catalogue (MC 257 and MC 438), preparatory to a larger work titled A Winter Twilight, now held in the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art in Indiana. Gifford scholar Ila Weiss suggests this work is likely MC 257 which sold in 1862 to William P. Wright. Regarding the artist’s twilight scenes from this period coinciding with the Civil War, Weiss notes, “their intense sky colors surely express the heightened feelings of wartime.” Describing this work, Weiss writes “the oil study establishes the cold, crisp idea of winter, conveyed in part with stiff, radiating lines of tree branches relieved against the glowing sky.”