.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
A letter from the recognized expert on the artist, Dr. Ila Weiss, accompanies this lot.
Lake Winnipesaukee resulted from an 1858 trip to New Hampshire that was inspired by Sanford Gifford’s desire to capture the beauty and grandeur of the White Mountains and the surrounding landscape. During the 1850s, this region saw increased tourist activity due to the recent completion of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, which later became the Grand Trunk Railway and provided easy transportation from Portland, Maine to Gorham, New Hampshire. Numerous hotels opened to accommodate the expanding activity and ensured that the once-exclusive panoramic views of the Presidential range and the surrounding peaks could be enjoyed by a wider audience.
Lake Winnipesaukee, the largest lake in the state of New Hampshire and located centrally in the state just south of the White Mountains, similarly became a popular attraction to tourists and New England’s elite. In the present work, we look south from an area just behind Moultonborough Bay not far from the eventual site of Castle in the Clouds or Lucknow, an extravagant home built by Thomas Gustave Plant, towards the towns of Gilford and Laconia, New Hampshire. In the distance Belknap Mountain and billowing clouds loom over the scene. While small structures dot the landscape and diminutive sailboats can be seen on the water, the two figures strolling in the foreground, highlighted by a brilliant shot of red, and the prominent structure at left draw the viewer into the composition. For Gifford, the inclusion of the figures and buildings indicate the onset of man's encroachment into this divine and pristine landscape.
Lake Winnipesaukee is emblematic of the most iconic Hudson River School works in palette, with various touches of muted browns, yellows and greens in a lively, painterly fashion, and it reflects Gifford’s increasing interest in the effects of light and atmosphere. As with similar works, Gifford cloaks the landscape in a serene light and hazy glow evoking a soft and poetic mood. Gifford emphasizes closely related values in order to create a feeling of unity as well as to reveal nature's harmonious connections. Through his rich depiction of luminous light, Gifford is suggesting a transcendental notion of the passage from God to Nature to Man. "Gifford was not a rebellious spirit. He made no overt moves of rejection towards the system of style and belief that he shared with his friends and contemporaries in the second generation of the Hudson River School, though, in his concentration upon color and light, he did succeed in finding an identity within it. But more than this, the things that he shared with his contemporaries knowingly or unknowingly became transformed by an artistic mentality and sensibility that, in its refinement, acute sensitivity, delicacy, subtlety--in short, in its aestheticism--had no parallel among them...it was an exclusive art. Its perimeters were close and clearly marked, and were so in order that Gifford could devote himself to the subtleties of color and pictorial design that, in the final analysis, lay at the center of his artistic temperament, and that were no less central to the appeal his paintings had for his contemporaries and continue to exercise today." (N. Cikovsky, Jr., Sanford Robinson Gifford, Austin, Texas, 1970, p. 18)
Lake Winnipesaukee resulted from an 1858 trip to New Hampshire that was inspired by Sanford Gifford’s desire to capture the beauty and grandeur of the White Mountains and the surrounding landscape. During the 1850s, this region saw increased tourist activity due to the recent completion of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, which later became the Grand Trunk Railway and provided easy transportation from Portland, Maine to Gorham, New Hampshire. Numerous hotels opened to accommodate the expanding activity and ensured that the once-exclusive panoramic views of the Presidential range and the surrounding peaks could be enjoyed by a wider audience.
Lake Winnipesaukee, the largest lake in the state of New Hampshire and located centrally in the state just south of the White Mountains, similarly became a popular attraction to tourists and New England’s elite. In the present work, we look south from an area just behind Moultonborough Bay not far from the eventual site of Castle in the Clouds or Lucknow, an extravagant home built by Thomas Gustave Plant, towards the towns of Gilford and Laconia, New Hampshire. In the distance Belknap Mountain and billowing clouds loom over the scene. While small structures dot the landscape and diminutive sailboats can be seen on the water, the two figures strolling in the foreground, highlighted by a brilliant shot of red, and the prominent structure at left draw the viewer into the composition. For Gifford, the inclusion of the figures and buildings indicate the onset of man's encroachment into this divine and pristine landscape.
Lake Winnipesaukee is emblematic of the most iconic Hudson River School works in palette, with various touches of muted browns, yellows and greens in a lively, painterly fashion, and it reflects Gifford’s increasing interest in the effects of light and atmosphere. As with similar works, Gifford cloaks the landscape in a serene light and hazy glow evoking a soft and poetic mood. Gifford emphasizes closely related values in order to create a feeling of unity as well as to reveal nature's harmonious connections. Through his rich depiction of luminous light, Gifford is suggesting a transcendental notion of the passage from God to Nature to Man. "Gifford was not a rebellious spirit. He made no overt moves of rejection towards the system of style and belief that he shared with his friends and contemporaries in the second generation of the Hudson River School, though, in his concentration upon color and light, he did succeed in finding an identity within it. But more than this, the things that he shared with his contemporaries knowingly or unknowingly became transformed by an artistic mentality and sensibility that, in its refinement, acute sensitivity, delicacy, subtlety--in short, in its aestheticism--had no parallel among them...it was an exclusive art. Its perimeters were close and clearly marked, and were so in order that Gifford could devote himself to the subtleties of color and pictorial design that, in the final analysis, lay at the center of his artistic temperament, and that were no less central to the appeal his paintings had for his contemporaries and continue to exercise today." (N. Cikovsky, Jr., Sanford Robinson Gifford, Austin, Texas, 1970, p. 18)