American Art A Coming Storm Made in United States, North and Central America1863, retouched and redated in 1880 Sanford Gifford, American, 1823-1880 Oil on canvas Currently not on view 2004-115-1 125th Anniversary Acquisition. Gift of the McNeil Americana Collection, 2004 |
LabelPainted in the midst of the Civil War, Sanford Gifford's A Coming Storm was first owned by celebrated Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth, brother of Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth. When the great American writer Herman Melville saw the painting at an exhibition in New York City just after Lincoln's death in April 1865, he was struck by the work's symbolism and wrote a poem about its tragic prescience that includes: A demon-cloud like the mountain one Gifford, who served in the Union Army himself, was keenly interested in the dramatic effects of weather and light, shown here along the banks of Lake George in upstate New York. Social Tags [?]autumn [x] clouds [x] fall foliage [x] lake george [x] landscape [x] mountains [x] nhd 1861 to 1877 rural [x] toward the storm [x] [Add Your Own Tags] |
