Sanford Robinson Gifford (July 10, 1823 – August 29, 1880) was an American landscape painter and a leading member of the second generation of Hudson River School artists.

He was born in Greenfield, New York, the fourth of the eleven children of Quaker ironmaker Elihu Gifford and Eliza Robinson Starbuck.

[3] Like most Hudson River School artists, Gifford traveled extensively to find scenic landscapes to sketch and paint.

During the summer of 1867, Gifford spent most of his time painting on the New Jersey coast, specifically at Sandy Hook and Long Branch, according to an auction Web site.

The Mouth of the Shrewsbury River, one noted canvas from the period, is a dramatic scene depicting a series of telegraph poles extending into an atmospheric distance underneath ominous storm clouds.

Then in the summer of 1870 Gifford ventured to the Rocky Mountains in the western United States, this time with Worthington Whittredge and John Frederick Kensett.

[7] Mr. Gifford's method is this: When he sees anything which vividly impresses him, and which therefore he wishes to reproduce, he makes a little sketch of it in pencil on a card about as large as an ordinary visiting-card.

Ten, eleven, twelve consecutive hours, according to the season of the year, are occupied in the first great effort to put the scene on canvas.

[8]Gifford would often revisit an image later, sometimes years later, painting a variation based on his sketches and own inspiration, or a patron's wishes.

Thirty-six Venice paintings, based on his 1869 drawings and studies of the city, were listed in the 1881 memorial catalogue of Gifford's works.

"[9] In the same letter, he wrote about his commission fees: "The price of such a picture the size of the [Fishing Boats Entering the Harbor of] Brindisi is $1600 without the frame.

Among the more important pictures that are displayed may be noted Twilight in the Wilderness (1861), Kauterskill Clove (1863), Mansfield Mountain (1868), The Mouth of the Shrewsbury (1868), Sta.

[12]The following year, MMA published a catalog of his works, which listed 734 paintings and featured an appraisal of his work by his friend, John F. Weir of Yale University:[13] Mr. S. R. Gifford was represented [at the 1876 Centennial Exposition] by his Sunrise on the Sea-Shore, of which it may be said that the sea and its solitude has seldom inspired a more profound motive, or one more adequately rendered, than this picture.

Tivoli and Lake Geneva are no less admirable, but with a very distinct sentiment, and Pallanza, Lago Maggiore has a full-blooded sense of light, modified by tone that is in every respect masterly in treatment.

Two pictures by the same artist, Fishing-Boats of the Adriatic and San Giorgio, Venice, are as strong and pronounced in color as the former works are delicate and suggestive.

The crowd was larger than anticipated, and with some 800 people packed into the building, the floor of the ballroom collapsed, in what became known as the Madison Square Garden disaster.

[17] Between 1955 and 1973, Gifford's heirs donated the artist's letters and personal papers to the Archives of American Art, at the Smithsonian Institution.

In December 2008, one of Gifford's paintings, Mount Mansfield, Vermont (1859), became part of a controversy over deaccessioning by the National Academy of Design.

Prior to joining AAMD, the Academy had sold two Thomas Eakins works (including his "diploma painting," Wrestlers) in the 1970s, and Richard Caton Woodville's War News from Mexico (1848) in 1994.

"[20] In a 2008 sale, the Academy quietly sold Frederic Edwin Church‘s Scene on the Magdalene (1854) and Sanford Gifford's Mount Mansfield, Vermont (1859) to a private collector for US$13.5 million.

[22] As punishment for these actions, AAMD asked its other member museums to "cease lending artworks to the Academy and collaborating with it on exhibitions.