The Final Fire of Sanford Robinson Gifford
Sanford Robinson Gifford did not paint October in the Catskills just to celebrate the changing leaves. He painted it because his time was up and he wanted to leave a fire behind. It was 1880 and death was waiting right around the corner. The world was moving on but Gifford had one last statement to make.
He built this final vision on an unusual square canvas measuring exactly thirty-six inches on both sides. That rigid shape does not let your eye wander off into the scenic edges. It traps your vision. It forces you to stare straight down the center at a distant glowing mountain. Gifford wanted you locked inside that golden heat. To achieve this he applied a warm tonal underpainting to make the sky actually radiate from within. It is not just yellow oil paint smeared on fabric. It is a simulated fever.
This intense haze stands as the absolute peak of American atmospheric perspective. He pushed the technique as far as humanly possible before the era of sweeping romantic landscapes finally died out. Gifford finished this piece and then he followed the movement into the grave. He died suddenly just after completing the work.
The public first saw the masterpiece posthumously at a memorial exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1881. Mourners stood in front of that perfectly square piece of canvas and stared directly into a manufactured sun. The artist was gone but he left behind a sky that refused to cool down.
References
Avery, Kevin J. American Paradise The World of the Hudson River School. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987.
Weiss, Ila. Poetic Landscape The Art and Experience of Sanford R. Gifford. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987.