Morning in the Adirondacks, Sanford Robinson Gifford

Artwork Overview

Sanford Robinson Gifford, Morning in the Adirondacks
Sanford Robinson Gifford, Morning in the Adirondacks
Sanford Robinson Gifford
Morning in the Adirondacks
1867
Sanford Robinson Gifford, artist
1823–1880
Morning in the Adirondacks, 1867
Where object was made: United States
Material/technique: canvas; oil
Dimensions:
Canvas/Support (Height x Width x Depth): 50 1/4 x 42 1/4 in
Canvas/Support (Height x Width x Depth): 127.63 x 107.31 cm
Frame Dimensions (Height x Width x Depth): 64 1/2 x 56 x 6 3/4 in
Credit line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph R. Pearson, 1954. Frame courtesy of the Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, and Eli Wilner & Company Period Frames and Mirrors, New York
Accession number: 1995.0144
On display: Kress Gallery
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Images

Label texts

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.

Exhibition Label:
"This Land," Mar-2014, Kate Meyer
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.

Archive Label:
In 1874 Gifford included Morning in the Adirondacks in a "List of some of my Chief Pictures, " having sold it in 1867 to an Englishman named Samuel Lord, one of the founders of Lord and Taylor department stores. Joseph Pearson purchased the painting in England in the 1950s and donated it to the University of Kansas to be used in the residence halls.

Morning in the Adirondacks culminates a series of painting that resulted from visits Gifford made to the Adirondack wilderness of northern New York, beginning in the 1840s. As he depicts the vastness of the wilderness and the dramatic effects of mist and morning sunlight, Gifford also records the impact of the pioneer settlers who cleared the land and built homes there.

In March of 2009, Morning in the Adirondacks was reframed in a virtuosic reproduction of an original American fluted-cove frame from the 1860s, just like frames used by Gifford and his Hudson River School artist colleagues.

The frame was made possible through the generosity of the Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, and by Eli Wilner & Company Period Frames and Mirrors, New York.

Exhibitions

This Land
Kate Meyer, curator
2014–2015
Teaching Gallery: Ecocritical Art History
2013
Google Art Project
2016
This Land
Kate Meyer, curator
2016–2021
Keep Calm and Breathe
2020
Debut
Kris Ercums, curator
2021–2023
Illumination
Kris Ercums, curator
2022–2027
Debut
Kris Ercums, curator
2021–2022
Illumination
Kris Ercums, curator
2022–2027

Resources

Audio

Didactic – Art Minute
Didactic – Art Minute
Episode 27 I’m David Cateforis with another art minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. Sanford Gifford’s 1867 painting, “Morning in the Adirondacks,” is both an image of the grandeur of American nature and man’s transformation of it. The painting depicts a cozy log cabin built at the frontier of a secluded mountain landscape. Majestic peaks caressed by low-drifting clouds loom above a tranquil lake, while near the cabin, tiny human figures stir by the shore. The remote and pristine quality of the wilderness is interrupted by splintered tree stumps at the lower left - a clear indication of the human presence in this landscape. As two men prepare to launch a canoe at the water’s edge, our eye is drawn to a second boat that has already ventured ahead, boldly traversing the seemingly-endless passage before it. By the time Gifford made this painting in the years right after the Civil War, the Northeastern states were becoming highly industrialized. For some, this development prompted nostalgia for the pioneering traditions of the past. “Morning in the Adirondacks” is a beautiful example of such wistful reminiscence, and one of the Spencer’s most important American paintings. With thanks to Joanna Sternberg for her text, from the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.
Audio Tour – Bulldog Podcast
Audio Tour – Bulldog Podcast
Audio Tour – Bulldog Podcast
Audio Tour – Bulldog Podcast
Audio Tour – Bulldog Art Tour
Audio Tour – Bulldog Art Tour
Hear a SWMS student's perspective.
Audio Tour – Bulldog Art Tour
Hear a SWMS student's perspective.
Audio Tour – Bulldog Art Tour
Hear a SWMS student's perspective.
Audio Tour – Bulldog Art Tour
Hear a SWMS student's perspective.
Audio Tour – Bulldog Art Tour
This Land, an exhibition by Kate Meyer, (specifically the painting is morning in the Adirondacks By Sanford Robinson Gifford.) With its deep hues and even deeper meanings, this sunlit valley is a piece that represents many things, from the mistreatment of the land and its indigenous people, to the power of national icons. This piece brings a strong feeling of warmth and peace with its warm tones and its light contrasts, as if to say that while our land is beautiful it must be treated as if it is the most expensive thing we have. With pollution, displacement of animals and people’s, and constant chopping of not only the trees but our ozone layer, we have not taken these messages seriously enough. This Land is our only land, for we have no second place to go to once we have completely destroyed these sloped valleys and calm waters, with trees and grass going ever so slowly, blowing gently in the breeze. If you look closely you’ll see that in the near sight of the painting, what’s closest to you, is chopped down, and destroyed, but you don’t see that when you look at the painting immediately, only once you really take a look. Just like in times now, with Covid-19, people only looked at how many people weren’t infected and decided not to do anything about the virus until it was practically too late. Just as it happens in nature, for example with issues like climate change, an issue that is laughed at by almost one fourth of America and the number is rising as people in power corrupt the minds of the population. We can change and there is hope for the future, we just have to look close, and do our part to protect, This Land.