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A private collector SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD (1823-1880) A Sketch on the Nile, 1869 inscribe...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:100,000.00 - 150,000.00 USD
A private collector SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD (1823-1880) A Sketch on the Nile, 1869 inscribe...
A private collector
SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD
(1823-1880)
A Sketch on the Nile, 1869
inscribed and dated, "On the Nile, March 7, '69" (lower left)
oil on canvas
71/2 x 13 in. (19.05 x 33.02 cm) <p>Estimate: $100,000-150,000 <p> Provenance
Estate of the artist, 1881 Gifford Estate Sale, Chickering Hall, New York, April 11 and 12, 1881, lot 35, no. 526 Professor Othiel C. Marsh (noted Paleontologist at Yale University) Private Collection Ira Spanierman, Inc., New York Private Collection <p> Exhibited
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Memorial Collection of the Works of the Late Sanford R. Gifford, 1880-1881, no. 526 <p> Literature
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, A Memorial Catalogue of Paintings of Sanford Robinson Gifford, N.A, New York, 1881, no. 526 Ila Weiss, Ph.D., Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experience of Sanford R. Gifford, Newark, p. 293 <p> Sanford Gifford, ever in search of picturesque subjects and unusual qualities of light, left Italy in January 1889 for a four-month journey that would take him to Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, and Greece. His first stop was Alexandria, which he found disappointing, but Cairo, where he stayed for three weeks, was a different story. <p> The people, the splendid costumes, the gorgeous stuffs in the bazaars, the customs, the crowded, narrow, picturesque streets, ...the camels - everything looks as if it came out of the Arabian Nights.1 <p> In late January, Gifford left Cairo with a group of Americans and sailed up the Nile to the First Cataract and back. It was a leisurely six-week trip, with many stops to sample local culture and food, and to visit ruins. Gifford's only complaint - besides the fact that no one else in the group was an artist - was that he was unable to get much work done. "During nearly three months I sailed magnificently on the Nile, and whacked my donkey among the temples and tombs, and scarcely a line records it."2 <p>Nonetheless, Gifford still managed to produce seven of his finest oil sketches, many of which he later turned into larger paintings. One of these sketches is A Sketch on the Nile, dated March 7, just five days before Gifford's return to Cairo. Three years later, Gifford completed his larger version of the subject, the much-praised On the Nile, 1872 (Private Collection). The sketch and the finished painting that resulted are practically identical except in size. <p>Both works display the economy of design and subtle coloring that mark Gifford's finest Luminist paintings. Gifford himself noted the exquisite hues of the cliffs, sands, and grasses of Nile Valley, but he marveled mostly at the "broad, pure, & tender sky, in which the sun shines with great splendor."3 It is this almost opalescent sky of blended pinks and blues, and its reflection in the water, that most captures the viewer's attention; that, and the graceful white sail that serves as the only significant vertical note in an otherwise unimpeded horizontal expanse. <p>Writing in 1876 about Gifford's Egyptian paintings, a critic for the Art Journal noted that works like A Sketch on the Nile are perhaps the most striking in their temperance of treatment and truth of color of any ever produced by an American artist. To those who have visited the valley of the Nile they recall [it] most impressively, in a style wholly free from extravagance or artificiality.3 <p>We are grateful to Dr. Bruce Chambers for cataloguing this lot. <p> Notes 1 Ila Weiss, Ph.D., Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experience of Sanford R. Gifford, Newark, p. 293. 2 Ibid, p. 121. 3 Art Journal 2, 1876, p. 203.
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