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A TRIBUTE TO THE DEAD ARTIST'S MEMORY, AND AN ANALYSIS OF HIS ART, BY HIS FRIEND, PROFESSOR JOHN F. WEIR

To the Editors of the Evening Post:

The death of Sanford R. Gifford will occasion a void that will be keenly felt by a large circle of friends and by that more numerous body of art-lovers who have long accorded him the respect and admiration due to extraordinary genius.

The life of the artist absorbed in the practice of his art is generally uneventful; the even flow of the aesthetic stimulus is only interrupted by secret endeavor which has no visible surface features to attract attention. The real events are for the most subjective—a new and deeper insight, a more subtle sympathy with the significance of nature, a higher aim and purpose in searching out a correspondence in the means furnished by art for expressing the emotions kindled by that which is beautiful, by that which is good and true.  
 
There is nothing more true than the fact that the genuine artist must put his life in his work. The product of genius is the exact equivalent of the powers put forth in production. The qualities manifested in the pictures are the unconscious expression of the personality of the painter. By their works ye shall know them.
 
Sanford Robinson Gifford was born in Greenfield, Saratoga county, N.Y., July 10, 1823. His childhood and youth were passed at Hudson, and in 1842 he entered Brown University, where he remained till 1844, when he went to New York and entered upon the study of his profession. In 1854 he became a member of the National Academy of Design, and in 1855 he went abroad, where he remained a year or two. In 1868 he again went abroad and spent two years sketching in Italy, Greece, Syria, and Egypt. Among the most well known of his works are "Sunrise on the Seashore," "Shrewsbury River," "Twilight on Hunter Mountain," "Home in the Wilderness," "San Giorgio, Venice," "Fishing Boats of the Adriatic," "Pallanza," "Tivoli," "The Golden Horn," "Brindisi," and "The Parthenon." This is the brief record of the encyclopædia, but no mere narration of the facts would suggest the fulness and richness of his professional life. His brush was unceasingly productive in works of a high order of excellence, expressive of a wide range of subject and equally sustained in unerring skill in execution. Gifford's art was poetic and reminiscential. It was not realistic; it was nature passed through the alembic of a finely organized sensibility. No more false estimate could be put forth than the assertion that he forsook nature for his own fancies; that he exaggerated or seized upon that which was novel and specious. He was unerringly profound in his insight of that which was most truly nature, of those truths that underlie the superficial aspects which engage the common eye. He valued according to the deeper values that remain in the memory as the residuum of impressions derived from nature. Yet he was too skillful an artist not to understand, with great clearness and force, that accuracy of statement with reference to the physical conditions of nature was essential to the healthful effects of art. His sentiment was extracted from the truth of these physical conditions, and was never the morbid outcome of riotous fancy or of pensive melancholy. His character reflected his art as his works did his character. His judgement was always calm, discriminative, just. His associates, men of all professions, were devotedly attached to him for qualities he possessed distinct from his merits as an artist. The shaft of malice, ruthlessly as it is often aimed, never was directed against Gifford, for it could find no vantage ground in a character so spotless, so noble and pure. This may seem to be an extravagant estimate of one who entered fully into every social condition of the times in which he lived; and yet it is the common testimony of all who knew him that he was never known to descend from that elevated plane upon which he lived and moved and had his being, and which was the ground of admiration in the estimate of his personal character no less than of his merits as an artist. In his professional, social and private life there was a unity and consistency of noble aim and action that attached to him those who knew him with uncommon warmth, and there is no American artist whose death will be more widely lamented, or whose absence from the accustomed gatherings of his professional associates and friends will be more keenly felt.
J.F.W.
The Century, 109 East Fifteenth street, August 29, 1880.

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Wednesday Sept, 1, 1880

It has been a cloudy sober day. Joe Tomkins and I walked over to the cemetery after breakfast and he and Laura and I went to my studio. I have done some thing towards packing some of my things preparatory to my departure some time next week, and have written to Mr. Laycester, & to Eastman Johnson and commenced a letter to Booth. Had a note from Mr Bachelder from Bexford saying they would go to Seconnet tomorrow he had not heard of Giffords death. I saw in the telegraphic news in the Freeman tonight that R. M. Pratt the artist is dead. He was a member of the Academy. John McEntee came up with Mrs. Reed to call. He asked me if I would sign a petition for Reeds pardon and I told him I would cheerfully. I wrote to Mary Gifford about my business affairs with Sanford.

Thursday Sept 2 1880

Joe and Laura started for home via Boston by the 11 oclock train for Troy. I varnished our spare room bed stead we used to have over in our little house to put in the spare room here and sent my stove down to have put in order the one I had in my studio the first year it was built. Wrote to Alice telling her what Stedman said. A letter from Eastman wanting