• If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Identity Theft: How a Cropsey Became a Gifford

This version was saved 15 years, 1 month ago View current version     Page history
Saved by PBworks
on February 10, 2009 at 1:01:41 pm
 

Identity Theft: How a Cropsey Became a Gifford

November 21, 2009 - March 28, 2010

Mint Museum of Art

 

 

Sanford Robinson Gifford, Indian Summer in the White Mountains, ca. 1862
(formerly attributed to Jasper Francis Cropsey)
Mint Museum of Art
 

 

Identity Theft centers around what is perhaps the Mint Museum’s most important Hudson River School painting, Sanford Robinson Gifford’s Indian Summer in the White Mountains, which was for many years attributed to Jasper Francis Cropsey and titled Mount Washington from Lake Sebago, Maine.  Although long questioned by Gifford scholar Ila Weiss, Indian Summer in the White Mountains remained attributed to Cropsey based on the apparently original signature and date in the lower left corner of the painting. However, recent conservation work revealed a Gifford signature and a new date beneath Cropsey’s –a find that presents the Museum with a unique opportunity to share with our visitors a number of fascinating professional and art historical issues.

 

The exhibition features other works by both Cropsey and Gifford to serve as points of comparison and contrast. Along with documented paintings by Cropsey of Mount Washington, and photographs of both Mount Washington and the White Mountains.

 

Compare signatures on the Museum’s painting with those of the other paintings in the exhibition and enlarged photographs of each artist’s signature taken from other paintings of the period. See examples of 19th century auction catalogues, that helped bolster the new identity of the Museum’s painting.

 

Sanford Robinson Gifford (July 10, 1823 - August 29, 1880)

 

Sanford Robinson Gifford was an American landscape painter and one of the leading members of the Hudson River School. Gifford's landscapes are known for their emphasis on light and soft atmospheric effects, and he is regarded as a practitioner of Luminism, an offshoot style of the Hudson River School.

  • Hudson River School Vision: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford - information on an exhibit on Gifford at the Metropolitian Museum of Art - includes links to more information about the artist and the Hudson River School 
  • Sanford Robinson Gifford pages - this digitized collection from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art contains circa 130 items that provide scattered documentation of Gifford's life, primarily extensive biographical accounts of his travels in the mid 1850s and late 1860s in the form of bound letters to his father.

 

Jasper Francis Cropsey (February 18, 1823 - April 23, 1900)

 

Jasper Francis Cropsey was an important American landscape artist of the Hudson River School. At the peak of his career—from the mid-1840s through the 1870s—Cropsey enjoyed fame in both England and the United States for his views of American scenery, particularly his richly colored canvases capturing the glories of the American autumn.

  • Newinton-Cropsey Foundation - preserves and displays the home and artwork of Jasper F. Cropsey - includes a biography, images of works and list of available publications 
  • Images of his works

 

Print Resources available through MARCO: The Mint Art Research Catalog Online 

  • Gifford, Sanford Robinson, 1823-1880. Hudson River School visions : the landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford. New York : Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003.
  • Gifford, Sanford Robinson, 1823-1880. Sanford Robinson Gifford, 1823-1880. [Austin: University of Texas Art Museum, 1970?].
  • Weiss, Ila, 1939-. Poetic landscape : the art and experience of Sanford R. Gifford. Newark : University of Delaware Press, c1987.
  • Talbot, William S. Jasper F. Cropsey, 1823-1900. Washington : Published for the National Collection of Fine arts by the Smithsonian Institution Press [for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off.], 1970.

 

 

Scripts for SnapShots and Google Analytics have been added to this template.

 

 

 

____________________________

 

Created by Rebecca Stockin, Volunteer for the Mint Museum Library