Known for realistic, refined depictions of 19th-century American landscapes, Sanford Gifford used light as a technique to convey emotions in a way that made him one of the country's leading luminists. His mature style was a balancing of exacting detail of forms with a sense of atmosphere that often sacrificed topographic details. He finished his canvases by using multiple layers of translucent varnish.

Early in his career, he was a portraitist, but in the summer of 1846, a trip to the Berkshire Hills and Catskill Mountains combined with his admiration for the painting of Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole inspired him to return to the freedom of landscape work. Gifford, like many of his peers, understood th...