Sanford R. Gifford

Launt Thompson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sanford R. Gifford (1823–1880) based his atmospheric, light-filled paintings on the close study of nature, often depicting scenes in the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains. From 1857 until his death, he worked in New York City in the Tenth Street Studio Building, but he took frequent trips, both in the United States and abroad, to produce on-site sketches. Thompson, too, was a long-term occupant of the Tenth Street building and moved in the same circles as many of the Hudson River School painters. He modeled this realistic portrait just after Gifford served on a committee planning the formation of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art