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Sanford Robinson Gifford

Lake Geneva, 1875

Now On View

Description

Maker

Title

Lake Geneva

Year

1875

Medium

Oil on canvas

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Supports

Dimensions

55.2 x 101.6 cm (21 11/16 x 40 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Signed LR in brown:S. R. Gifford 1875; Signed on Verso in black:Lake Geneva - S. R. Gifford pinxt 1875

Type

Credit

Anonymous gift

Object Number

56.166

Projects & Publications

Publications

Selection VII

American Painting from the Museum's Collection, c.1800-1930

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Making It In America

October 11, 2013 - February 9, 2014

Gifford attended Brown University before he moved to New York in 1845 to study painting. He became celebrated for luminous landscapes, which included Hudson River Valley views as well as scenes from his travels abroad.

While visiting Switzerland in 1868 he sketched the Castle of Chillon on Lake Geneva (Lac Léman), a romantic destination for 19th-century travelers. Panoramic photographs that had recently become available to tourists also served as resources for his paintings of the site. Gifford appropriated their horizontal format to capture the radiant expanse of the lake and distant peaks, unifying both sky and water in a rosy atmospheric glow.

The restoration of this frame was made possible by a generous gift from Eli Wilner & Company, New York.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Lake Geneva with the accession number of 56.166. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.