Morning in the Adirondacks, Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–1880)

In Europe people talk a great deal of the wilds of America, but the Americans themselves never think about them; they are insensible to the wonders of inanimate nature and they may be said not to perceive the mighty forests that surround them till they fall beneath the hatchet. Their eyes are fixed upon another sight: the American people views its own march across these wilds, draining swamps, turning the course of rivers, peopling solitudes, and subduing nature.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1840
Gifford and other Hudson River School painters challenged Tocqueville’s belief that the wilderness held no fascination for Americans, yet the subjugation of nature persists as a theme in this composition. Gifford delighted in painting the “glorious forest primeval” that filled the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. His treatment of the warm, morning light reveals misty mountain peaks, abundant forests, and a quiet lake but also illuminates a clearing around a small log cabin, alluding to the impact of this settlement upon the land.