A Gorge in the Mountains, 1862, by Sanford Robinson Gifford
Sanford Gifford, another outdoorsman of the Hudson RIver School artists, was one of the great painters of light effects. This view in the Catskills is a perfect example, showing the twin waterfalls in Kaaterskill Clove in late afternoon. Can’t you feel the atmosphere rising up out of the Clove?
Hunter Mountain, Twilight, 1866, by Sanford Robinson Gifford
Gifford was from Hudson, NY, where his father owned an iron foundry. Across the river in the Catskills, the biggest industry was leather tanning. When Gifford painted this view of Hunter Mountain right after the Civil War, he made a point of showing a field of tree stumps in the foreground and, according to the Terra Foundation (the painting’s current owner):
“…The small farm has been stripped of its hemlock trees to harvest tannin, an essential ingredient in leather tanning. In 1860s America, tree stumps symbolized both the destruction of treasured wilderness and the devastation caused by the American Civil War (1861–65), during which Gifford served in the Union Army. The despoiled landscape he shows here expresses both a sense of national mourning and an emerging concern for nature conservation.”