The Blinding End of Sanford Robinson Gifford
Sanford Robinson Gifford did not paint the sun to show off his technical skills. He painted it to burn away the physical world. It was 1879 and the man was running out of time. Months later a brutal malarial fever would end his life. But right then he stood before a canvas and built a blinding focal point that dissolved the hard edges of the Hudson River.
The painting is Sunset on the Palisades of the Hudson. Gifford built the image slowly and obsessively. He applied heavy layers of varnish over the oil paint. He dragged semi-transparent glazes across the rough surface to trap the ambient light. He needed the canvas to glow from the inside out.
Kingmakers of the nineteenth century dismissed this quiet style. They wanted loud landscapes and obvious theatrical drama. They completely missed the brooding and silent genius vibrating right in front of their faces. The artwork measures 18 by 34 inches of pure dissolved atmosphere. Gifford sent it to the National Academy of Design just before his body finally gave out in 1880. It hung there radiating a heavy and melancholic heat while the art world looked the other way.
Modern critics eventually caught up to what he was doing. They realized the blinding yellow sky was not just a cheap trick of the light. It was a dying man dissolving the physical landscape because he knew he was about to leave it behind forever.
References
Avery, Kevin J. A Hudson River School Vision. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003.
Gifford, Sanford Robinson. Sunset on the Palisades of the Hudson. 1879. Oil on canvas.
Kelly, Franklin. American Landscape Painting. Washington DC: National Gallery of Art, 1989.