Winter Twilight
| Artist | Sanford Robinson Gifford (American, 1823–1880) |
|---|---|
| Title | Winter Twilight |
| Date | 1862 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | Framed: 19 5/8 × 35 5/8 × 2 1/2 in. (49.8 × 90.5 × 6.4 cm) Support: 15 1/2 x 30 1/16 in. (39.4 x 76.4 cm) |
| Credit Line | Morton and Marie Bradley Memorial Collection, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University |
| Accession Number | 80.112 |
| This artwork is currently on view. | |
A landscape at twilight, with the horizon line running across the center of the canvas. In the foreground, three figures stand at the edge of a body of water. The figures and trees are silhouetted by a brilliant sunset of orange and yellow.
Sanford Robinson Gifford was a successful landscape painter who was one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. After traveling abroad to study the works of the Old Masters in the 1850s, he spent the majority of the 1860s painting in the American northeast. Winter Twilight may have been painted near his family’s home in Hudson, New York. Gifford’s masterful treatment of light and atmosphere elevates the everyday subject of three ice skaters huddled on a frozen pond. A critic who saw this painting in Gifford’s studio remarked that it was one of the artist’s “happiest efforts…with its still, dream-like beauty.”
Provenance research is ongoing for this and many other items in the Eskenazi Museum of Art permanent collection. For more information about the provenance of this artwork, please contact the department curator with specific questions.
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"Winter Twilight | Collections Online." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2025. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/browse/object.php?number=80.112