Sanford Robinson Gifford, born in 1823, studied at Brown University with John Rubens form 1842-44. He was trained in the Hudson River School style. Gifford began as a portraits but turned to landscapes after 1843 when he went on a sketching tour of the Catskill and Bershire Mountains. His luminist stlye highlighted subtle but dramatic lighting in pure landscapes which were free of the more more traditional historical, literal or allegorical references. Gifford's style matured with minute detail in overall atmosphere achieved through veiled tones and multiple layers of varnish. Gifford was able to meet the great art critic John Ruskin while taveling in Europe. He also took two trips out west in 1870 and 1974. In 1858 he became an original member of the 10th Street Studio building. Gifford died in 1880.

Biography courtesy of The Caldwell Gallery, www.antiquesandfineart.com/caldwell

America's most illustrious luminist painter, Sanford Robinson Gifford introduced a full-fledged love for light as a boundless and form-dissolving force. Gifford imbued his paintings with a transparent, intangible sense of atmosphere laid over the minute details of a landscape. Gifford traveled extensively throughout Europe and the United States, often accompanied by his fellow artists Albert Bierstadt, Worthington Whittredge, and John F. Kensett. In Europe, he was exposed to the art of John M.W. Turner and the Barbizon School, as well as the art criticism of John Ruskin; in the United States, he experienced the rough terrain of the American West. In 1858, he took a studio in the famed Tenth Street Studio Building in New York, where he became known as the leader of the Luminist movement. Gifford's work is currently in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Biography courtesy of Questroyal Fine Art LLC, www.antiquesandfineart.com/questroyal