Robert Swain Gifford

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Robert Swain Gifford (born December 23, 1840 in Naushon , Massachusetts , † January 13, 1905 in New York ) was an American landscape painter .

Life

Gifford was born on a small island called Nonamasset, off the island of Naushon on the southeast coast of Massachusetts. When he was two years old, the family moved to Fairhaven ( Mass. ), Where his father worked as sailors and fishermen.

Gifford received his first lessons in art from a Dutch marine painter , Albert van Beest, who lived there . He founded his own studio in Boston in 1864, but moved to New York in 1866. From there he went on study trips to Oregon and California in 1869 and from 1870 to the western countries of Europe, to Morocco, Algeria and Egypt, until he returned home via England in 1875. He was married to the American landscape painter Franics Elliot (* 1844), the daughter of Congressman Thomas Dawes Eliot from New Bedford, (Mass.) .

Gifford was influenced by the Barbizon School and is one of the most talented and versatile among the American landscape painters of his day; his landscapes are true to nature and very characteristic in the details; He treats snowstorms in the high mountains and peaceful, idyllic parts with equal virtuosity. He chose his motifs mostly from Italy, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco, whereby he handled oil painting just as skilfully as the watercolor technique .

Some of his works hang in major US exhibitions such as the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco , the Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Gifford, Robert Swain
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gifford, Swain
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American landscape painter
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Naushon , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH January 13, 1905
Place of death New York City