Sketchbook: Figures and Landscapes, 1860

Black fabric–covered cardboard covers; twenty-one pages
of off-white wove paper
24.2 x 14 cm
Gift of Sanford Gifford
2001.163

Sanford Robinson Gifford was one of the most successful and admired of the Hudson River school painters working in the second half of the nineteenth century. He began as a portrait painter, but then, as he wrote many years later, "During the summer of 1846 I made several pedestrian tours in the Catskill Mountains and the Berkshire Hills, and made a good many sketches from nature. These studies, together with the great admiration I felt for the works of [Thomas] Cole, developed a strong interest in landscape art, and opened my eyes to a keener perception and more intelligent enjoyment of nature. Having once enjoyed the absolute freedom of the landscape artist's life, I was unable to return to portrait painting. From this time my direction in art was determined."(1)Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., reproduced on microfilm reel D10.

Indeed, Gifford, like many of his colleagues, spent a good deal of time outdoors. Every summer, he traveled throughout upstate New York and New England, where he walked and sketched, returning to his studio in New York in the winter to paint from his sketches. The artist Worthington Whittredge described Gifford’s approach: "When sketching he preferred to look about for the fleeting effects of nature. He would frequently stop in his tracks to make slight sketches in pencil in a small book which he always carried in his pocket and then pass on, always suspicious that if he stopped too long to look in one direction the most beautiful thing of all might pass him by at his back."(2)Worthington Whittredge, "The Autobiography of Worthington Whittredge," Brooklyn Museum Journal (1942): 59.

The Fogg Art Museum owns twelve sketchbooks by Gifford, ranging in size from about two by four to about six by nine inches. They are filled with delicate pencil sketches of figures and landscapes. Some of the landscapes are extended over two pages, while others are tiny, the size of postage stamps, with little boxes drawn around them. The sketchbook reproduced here was executed in 1860 and contains many sketches taken in the Catskill Mountains, near Gifford's parents' house in Hudson, New York. Kauterskill Clove was one of the artist's favorite spots, and he sketched and painted it more than any other place. Two oil sketches of Kauterskill Clove recently donated to the Fogg were likely inspired by the pencil sketches in this book.

From selected sketches, Gifford would often make oil sketches on canvas, where "what has already been done in black and white is repeated in colour. To this [oil] sketch, which is about twelve inches by eight, he devotes an hour or two."(3)[George William Sheldon], "How One Landscape-Painter Paints," The Art Journal 3, no. 9 (September 1877): 284. After working out his compositions and colors in oil, he would create the finished oil painting. The Fogg has two of Gifford's oil sketches, which, along with the twelve sketchbooks, were recently donated by Dr. Sanford Gifford, the artist's great-nephew. A superb example of one of his finished oil paintings is the Fogg's Leander's Tower on the Bosphorus (1895.716).

1. Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., reproduced on microfilm reel D10.

2. Worthington Whittredge, "The Autobiography of Worthington Whittredge," Brooklyn Museum Journal (1942): 59.

3. [George William Sheldon], "How One Landscape-Painter Paints," The Art Journal 3, no. 9 (September 1877): 284.