The Golden Graveyard
Sanford Robinson Gifford did not paint a pretty sunset to make the New York elite feel good about themselves. He painted a warning disguised as a dream. It was 1866. The Civil War had just ended. The nation was nursing its wounds and trying to figure out what was left. Gifford gave them Hunter Mountain. The sky is a glowing yellow haze. It is a masterpiece of hidden brushstrokes. He wanted the sky to look like breath instead of paint. But look closer at the dirt.
The foreground is a graveyard. Tree stumps litter the earth. This is the brutal reality of aggressive frontier logging. Gifford captured a landscape actively being butchered. When he hung this canvas at the National Academy of Design in New York the kingmakers swooned. They praised the luminous sky. They entirely ignored the environmental devastation festering at the bottom of the frame. People always see exactly what they want to see.
The oil on canvas measures a sweeping fifty four inches across. It sits on the wall as a silent golden elegy. Gifford captured the American condition perfectly. We look up at the beautiful light while we hack away at the ground beneath our feet. The brushwork is flawless and the message is grim. It is a dying forest wrapped in an immaculate twilight.
References
Gifford, Sanford Robinson. Hunter Mountain, Twilight. 1866. Oil on canvas. 77.8 x 137.5 cm.
Miller, Angela. The Empire of the Eye. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.
National Academy of Design. Exhibition Records 1861-1900. New York. NAD Archives, 1928.