The Wilderness
Artist: Sanford Robinson Gifford (American, 1823-1880)
Date: 1860
Dimensions:
Frame: 43 × 67 × 5 3/4 in. (109.2 × 170.2 × 14.6 cm)
Medium: oil on canvas
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott
Object number: 1951.403
Label Text:A masterpiece of what has been called “luminism”—precisely rendered, poetic depictions of landscapes that focus on realistic effects of light and atmosphere—Sanford Gifford’s The Wilderness evokes a romanticized vision of humans living harmoniously with nature. In a vast American landscape dominated by a rugged peak (perhaps modeled on Mount Katahdin in Maine), Gifford includes a Native American family on the near shore and a canoe in the lake, based on sketches he made of the Mi’kmaq peoples in Halifax Basin, Nova Scotia.
While in reality such vistas were being encroached upon by industrialization and urbanization, The Wilderness is an homage to what had become central to American identity: the space, beauty, and unspoiled land that spoke of national destiny, spiritual renewal, and endless possibilities. American Indians—though having been forcibly removed from their ancestral lands in the Eastern United States by this time—became part of a nostalgic ideal of a simpler era being lost to “progress.”
While in reality such vistas were being encroached upon by industrialization and urbanization, The Wilderness is an homage to what had become central to American identity: the space, beauty, and unspoiled land that spoke of national destiny, spiritual renewal, and endless possibilities. American Indians—though having been forcibly removed from their ancestral lands in the Eastern United States by this time—became part of a nostalgic ideal of a simpler era being lost to “progress.”
On view
In Collection(s)