68134: Sanford Robinson Gifford (American, 1823-1880) T

Sanford Robinson Gifford (American, 1823-1880) The Darent River, Kent, England, 1856 Oil on canvas 18-1/4 x 15-1/4 inches (46.4 x 38.7 cm) Bears artist's estate stamp on the reverse PROVENANCE: The artist; Estate of the above; Sale: Thomas E. Kirby and Co., New York, The Gifford Collection, April 28-29, 1881, lot 86; Anonymous Gifford family member, acquired from the above; Christie's, New York, March 11, 1993, lot 38; Johnson Hall Fine Art, Roswell, Georgia; Private collection, Alpharetta, Georgia, acquired from the above, 2004. EXHIBITED: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, "Gifford Estate Loan Collection," 1880-81, no. 79. LITERATURE: J.W. Ehninger, Autograph Etchings by American Artists, 1859, n.p., illustrated in reverse, as etching; I. Weiss, Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880), New York, 1977, pp. 193-95, no. VI G 5; I. Weiss, Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experience of Sanford R. Gifford, Newark, Delaware, 1987, p. 87. According to noted Gifford scholar Dr. Ila Weiss in a letter dated June 24, 2004, a copy of which accompanies this lot: "[The Darent River, Kent, England] is a well-documented painting. On July 7, 1855, Gifford sketched a ‘footbridge over the Darent' for a painting commissioned by Vincent Coyler of Rowayton, Connecticut. (An oil sketch with that title and date is #62 in the Gifford Memorial Catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1881; Coyler's version is MC 63.) It included a ‘chimney of the paper mill' that remained on a site that Coyler's father had occupied. Several references to working on paintings of this subject occur in the first volume of the artist's European Journal (Archives of American Art). Six paintings of the subject were catalogued. The smallest and probably earliest sketch, retaining the chimney, is the only other version (MC #37). "[This] larger painting, bearing the Gifford Estate sale stamp, verso, is MC 82, identified as measuring (approximately) 18 ½ x 15 ½ inches, dated 1856, and exhibited in the Gifford Estate Loan Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1880-81, as #79. It was reported to be signed indistinctly in Christie's Sale Catalogue of March 11, 1993 (#38). Here the chimney is replaced by a church steeple which is given increased emphasis by leveling the horizon that it pierces, lightening the adjacent sky, and bathing the field before it in golden light. The distance occupied by this motif is enveloped in a luminous haze of sentiment. Two peasants on a rustic footbridge in the foreground, backs to the viewer, observing the river of the title, lend local color, both figuratively and literally. According to notations in an old copy of the estate auction catalogue, this painting was sold to a member of Gifford's family (Catalogue Part II, The Gifford Collection, April 28 and 29 (New York: Thomas E. Kirby and Co., 1881, #86)). "Gifford drew this composition, with the church steeple, on prepared glass from an early photographic etching process, cliché verre, developed by John W. Ehninger. It was used (printed in reverse) to illustrate a poem by N.P. Willis in Ehninger's Autograph Etchings by American Artists (1859) [reproduced in my book, Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880) (New York: Garland, 1977), VI G 5]. The paintings and cliché verre are discussed in that publication, pp. 193-195, as well as in my book, Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experience of Sanford R. Gifford (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1987, p. 87). HID03101062020 © 2020 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved