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©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Sanford Robinson Gifford

Near Palermo

1874
Oil on canvas.
40 x 75 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1982.42
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
Gifford's itinerary for his second European tour included a stop in Sicily. He landed in Messina on September 7, 1868 and travelled around the island before arriving in Palermo later in the month. The capital of Sicily, Palermo is known as La Città Felice: a reputation based on its semi-tropical climate, fertile vegetation, and magnificent surroundings. Mount Pellegrino rises above the Conca d'Oro, at the North-western extreme of the Bay of Palermo. Its beauty was praised a century before by Goethe as a "large rocky mass broader than it is high [...] its beautiful form cannot be described by words." Gifford captured its appearance as part of the mountainous panorama that spreads across the horizon in his picture. It presides over the low-lying foreground, with the open space of the sea and broad, flat road that leads the viewer's eye toward the city buildings along the far shore. He recorded this scene in at least one pencil drawing and three paintings. This one, the largest and final of the series, belonged to the artist's sister Mary, who waited for him back in Rome while he explored the ill-reputed island.

Gifford travelled not only in the footsteps of Goethe, but also in those of the American landscapist Thomas Cole, who had visited there more than two decades earlier. Cole recorded his own fascination with "the classic land of Sicily": "[...] the impressions left on my mind by its picturesqueness, fertility, and the grandeur of its architectural remains, are more vivid, and fraught with more sublime associations, than any I received during my late sojourn in Europe."

Cole, like most Americans who reached Sicily, depicted Taormina and Mt. Etna. Gifford instead found in this thoroughfare by the sea, peopled with carts and travellers, inspiration for a quiet, contemplative scene.

The artist toured the area sketching its scenery and customs at all hours, including the evening procession of stylish equipages of the Palermitan society that always impressed visitors. Yet when he came to paint this canvas, he depicted the road and its conveyances in bright sunlight (indicated by the shadows). It exemplifies Gifford's unique artistic sensibility and approach to Luminism. With the low horizon line, the greater part of the view is illuminated with this glorious, softly diffused light that conveys a sense of calm. He bathed the mountains, as he often did, in an envelope of mist; this was the visual corollary to his conviction that "the real important matter is not the natural object itself, but the veil of the medium through which we see it." His picture surfaces are carefully modulated. There is evident a subtle gradation of tone from bottom to top, combined with a gradual scale of brushwork: the detailed strokes that define foreground terrain lead into a more painterly middle ground, which then gives way to a more polished application in the upper sky. The distinctive magic of his art can be studied here: his ability to create a carefully-observed view of Palermo, in which topographical specificity is subordinated to the Mediterranean's glorious atmospheric haze.

Katherine E. Manthorne

19th Century19th Century. North American Painting. LuminismPaintingOilcanvas
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  • Private and/or didactic use
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Private and/or didactic use
Near Palermo. Cerca de Palermo, 1874
Near Palermo
Sanford Robinson Gifford

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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The exploitation rights of the images correspond to the Fundación Coleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza, F.S.P. The Fundación authorizes the downloading of high-resolution images from its website for private use, use for educational and research purposes, and non-commercial uses.

Use for educational and research purposes is understood as the non-commercial or advertising use of images in presentations, conferences, school or university work, in classes at regulated education institutions, as well as in academic publications, with a circulation of less than 1,000 copies, provided that it is non-profit.

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Any use other than those indicated above will require the prior written authorization of the Fundación.

Any request for educational and research use or for non-commercial use (including academic publications), should be directed by email to the Museum Photo Library through the email address archivo.fotografico@museothyssen.org. This department manages the worldwide distribution of the images of the works of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum and the management of their reproduction rights for those uses.

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  • If the image is used for reproduction, the work must be reproduced in its entirety. The image may not be manipulated, deformed, modified or altered in any way. In particular, no superposition (of images or texts) on the reproduction is allowed.
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Near Palermo. Cerca de Palermo, 1874
Near Palermo
Sanford Robinson Gifford

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

Terms of Use

The Photo Library of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza offers sale and rental service of photographic material of all the works of the Carmen Thyssen Collection.

To request images or permits for commercial use in academic or research publications, that is, catalogues of other institutions, monographs and other specialised publications, you should contact the Photo Library by email at the e-mail: @email.

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Requests for scans or new photographs will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Once approved, an additional fee will apply. Re-photographing a work will require a minimum of six weeks to complete.

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