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Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné
Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, MA, Project Manager

Catalogue Entry

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Photo: Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
Sanford Robinson Gifford, c.1880 (Hills no. 31.1.86)
Photo: Reproduced in American Art Association sale catalogue, 1919
31.1 U.S. Portraits, Men

When Johnson returned to the United States, he not only painted genre paintings but he also continued to paint portraits, which gave him a steady income. After 1880 Johnson turned to portraiture almost exclusively. During the 1880s and 1890s he painted businessmen, lawyers, university presidents, and three U.S. presidents from life. At times he also painted their wives and children.

He was also commissioned to paint posthumous portraits, often from photographs. These portraits by and large do not have the sparkle and active brushwork of those done from life. It seems that the demand for portraits of business and civic leaders (and members of exclusive men’s clubs) was so high that portrait painters would often make copies of each other’s paintings to satisfy the market for such images. In many instances, it has been difficult to render opinions for such paintings. —PH

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Hills no. 31.1.86
Baur no. 189
Sanford Robinson Gifford
Alternate titles: possibly Portrait of the Late Sanford R. Gifford; Sanford R. Gifford, N.A.
c.1880
Oil on academy board
27 3/16 x 22 1/4 in. (69.1 x 56.5 cm)
Initialed lower right: E. J.
Description / Remarks

MacGibeny, 2021: Johnson may have referred to this portrait or a version of it when he wrote to his acquaintance Mr. [likely E. C. (Edmund Clarence)] Stedman from Nantucket in 1880, the year of Gifford's death: "I shall bring a portrait of Gifford, for the memorial accessory, a head."

Labels
Plaque on frame: SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD/(1823–1880)/PAINTED BY/EASTMAN JOHNSON (1824–1906)/PRESENTED BY JOHN F. LEWIS
Provenance
Thomas B. Clarke, until January 1919
[American Art Association, New York, January 7, 1919, Early American Portraits Collected by Mr. Thomas B. Clarke, no. 3 (as Sanford R. Gifford, N.A.)]
Gilbert S. Parker, January 7, 1919 (by purchase)
John Frederick Lewis, Philadelphia, until 1920
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1920 (by gift)
Exhibitions
1900a Union League Club of New York
The Union League Club of New York, New York, American Paintings, January 11–13, 1900, no. 14, [possibly, as Portrait of the Late Sanford R. Gifford].
References
Johnson, Eastman 1880a
Eastman Johnson, Nantucket, Mass, letter to [likely E. C. (Edmund Clarence)] Stedman, November 11, 1880. Information sourced from letter offered for sale on eBay, 2021, "I shall bring a portrait of Gifford, for the memorial accessory, a head".
AAA 1919a
De Luxe IIlustrated Catalogue of Early American Portraits Collected by Mr. Thomas B. Clarke, New York City. New York: American Art Association, January 1919. Sale catalogue, n.p., no. 3, illus., as Sanford R. Gifford, N.A.
Baur 1940
Baur, John I. H. An American Genre Painter: Eastman Johnson, 1824–1906. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, 1940. Exhibition catalogue (1939 Brooklyn Museum), pp. 54, 68, no. 189, as Sanford Robinson Gifford.
PAFA 1969
Check List: Paintings, Sculptures, Miniatures from the Permanent Collection. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1969.
Sitter Biography
Sitter: Gifford, Sanford Robinson
Biography:

Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–1880). Well-known American landscape painter and a close friend of Johnson.

White, Terry James. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1967–.

Gifford, Sanford Robinson
Keywords
Record last updated June 30, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Sanford Robinson Gifford, c.1880 (Hills no. 31.1.86)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=557 (accessed on March 28, 2024).