Elizabeth Meyer
Head of Auction Administration
Lot 19
Sanford Robinson Gifford(1823-1880)Arch of Nero at Tivoli from the West 8 x 13 3/8in
22 November 2016, 14:00 EST
New YorkSold for US$150,000 inc. premium
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Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880)
Arch of Nero at Tivoli from the West
inscribed and dated 'Tivoli Oct 13 '68' (lower right) and bears Gifford Estate Sale stamp (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
8 x 13 3/8in
inscribed and dated 'Tivoli Oct 13 '68' (lower right) and bears Gifford Estate Sale stamp (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
8 x 13 3/8in
Footnotes
Provenance
The artist.
Estate of the above.
Sale, Thos. E. Kirby & Co., New York, The Sanford R. Gifford Collection, Part I, April 11-12, 1881, lot 34.
J.A. Dean, acquired from the above.
Majda Comar.
Estate of the above.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.
Exhibited
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Loan Collection of Paintings in the West and East Galleries, October 1880-March 1881, p. 10, no. 132 (as The Arch of Nero, Tivoli, a study).
Literature
A Memorial Catalogue of the Paintings of Sanford Robinson Gifford, N.A., New York, 1881, p. 36, no. 514 (as A Sketch of the Arch of Nero at Tivolo, from the West).
Accompanying this lot is a letter and research report written by Sanford Gifford scholar, Dr. Ila Weiss. She confirms that the present work illustrates ruins of a Roman aqueduct at Ponte degli Arci, which stand near the city of Tivoli in Italy. According to her scholarship, this structure was for a period of time incorrectly referred to as the Arch of Nero and referred to as such in the artist's journal as well as among his peers.
Gifford had admired the works of Thomas Cole (1801-1848) who had visited the site and completed two accomplished pictures of the Arch. The first, a horizontal composition executed in 1832, titled A View Near Tivoli (morning), now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and a subsequent and much larger canvas, measuring 60 ¼ x 48 ¼in, completed in 1846, which resides in the Newark Museum, New Jersey. Cole's interpretation appears to be a romantic one decorated with white cumulous clouds and rolling green hills. Gifford marveled at these canvases and in his European journal admitted he was eager to get to the "picturesque Arch of Nero" which was "the subject of one of Cole's finest pictures".
On October 11, 1868, alongside his good friend, the artist Jervis McEntee (1828-1891), Gifford completed pencil sketches of the Arch from the east and west, filling a notebook with architectural drawings and figure studies. In the days that followed the artist completed three oil sketches of the Arch of Nero in comparable sizes. A decade later he revisited the subject and produced two much larger paintings of the Arch. The present work is the only known surviving example of these five paintings depicting Ponte degli Arci. Dr. Weiss concludes:
"Gifford's painting exemplifies his masterful and characteristic treatment of textures: the exploitation of red-brown under-painting to establish foreground foliage; a variety of brushstrokes to define grasses and leafage in varying degrees of haze; and the distinction between Roman masonry, rubble in the near-left, and the smoother construction of the ruined medieval tower above. Above all it demonstrates the command of colored light and air for which he is celebrated. The soft pink light of morning tinges the tangible atmosphere, modifying the blue of the sky as a cool gray warming towards the horizon, and constructing undulations on the distant mountainside with greyed salmon lights against cooler grays. The greens of meadow and trees are neutralized by the warm light to olive grays, and yellow grasses become tans with yellow-tan lights. The dominant arch and road and the aqueduct bridge, warmer and cooler tans, are bathed in soft salmon lights where the sun penetrates architectural openings. Splashes and pinpoints of sunlight glint on the edge of the bridge's walkway and on its figures, skillfully evoking their forms with tiny impasto dabs of white, red, and black; and they reveal people and animals in the far-foreground, even pinpoint an object on the head of the nearest figure otherwise half lost in shadow."
We wish to thank Dr. Ila Weiss for her assistance cataloguing this lot.
