Artist: Sanford Robinson Gifford,
Title: A Coming Storm (1863)
Date: 1863 (retouched 1880)
Location: Philadelphia Museum of Art.
What I love about this painting:
Gifford demonstrates his skill as a devotee of luminism and gives us the perfect view of a fine autumn day and the approaching storm. The way he contrasts the sun’s light against the ominous black clouds is true to nature, to how storms really look as they close in.
I like the way he shows the rock outcroppings, visible evidence of the hard stone of the mountains that lies beneath the lush finery of autumn foliage.
For the moment, the waters of the pond are quiet, reflecting the sky above. Rain cloaks the view of the distant valley, and soon we will feel the brunt of it. Enjoy the blaze of color while you can, as tomorrow those trees will be half-bare, and the ground will be covered in sodden tatters of red and gold.
While there appears to be some damage in the upper center, the integrity of the painting is still intact. It was retouched in 1880, but a modern retouching would likely bring it back to its original glory.
About the Artist, via Wikipedia:
Sanford Robinson Gifford (July 10, 1823 – August 29, 1880) was an American landscape painter and a leading member of the second generation of Hudson River School artists. A highly regarded practitioner of Luminism, his work was noted for its emphasis on light and soft atmospheric effects.
Although trained as a portrait painter, the first work Gifford exhibited at the National Academy was a landscape, in 1847. Thereafter, Gifford devoted himself primarily to landscape painting, becoming one of the finest artists of the Hudson River School. He was elected an Associate of the National Academy in 1851, and an Academician in 1854.
2008 National Academy of Design controversy:
In December 2008, one of Gifford’s paintings, Mount Mansfield, Vermont (1859), became part of a controversy over deaccessioning by the National Academy of Design. The Academy was a member of the Association of Art Museum Directors, whose policy stated that member museums could not sell works of art to cover operating expenses, only to purchase superior works or to weed out inferior or redundant ones. Prior to joining AAMD, the Academy had sold two Thomas Eakins works (including his “diploma painting,” Wrestlers) in the 1970s, and Richard Caton Woodville‘s War News from Mexico (1848) in 1994. According to its former curator, David Dearinger: “When the Academy later applied to the museum association for accreditation, Mr. Dearinger recalled, it was asked about the Woodville sale and promised not to repeat such a move.”
In a 2008 sale, the Academy quietly sold Frederic Edwin Church‘s Scene on the Magdalene (1854) and Sanford Gifford’s Mount Mansfield, Vermont (1859) to a private collector for US$13.5 million. The former was the Academy’s only painting by Church; the latter was its only painting by Gifford. Both had been “donated to the Academy in 1865 by another painter, James Augustus Suydam.” News of the sale was broken by arts blogger Lee Rosenbaum. As punishment for these actions, AAMD asked its other member museums to “cease lending artworks to the Academy and collaborating with it on exhibitions.” The Academy had contemplated selling additional paintings, but those plans were abandoned after being reported by Rosenbaum. [1]
Credits and Attributions:
IMAGE: A Coming Storm by Sanford Robinson Gifford. Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Gifford A Coming Storm 1863-1880 PMA.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Gifford_A_Coming_Storm_1863-1880_PMA.jpg&oldid=803742381 (accessed October 5, 2023).
[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Sanford Robinson Gifford,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sanford_Robinson_Gifford&oldid=1176083433 (accessed October 5, 2023).
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 