A Home in the Wilderness

Artist
Sanford Robinson Gifford
Year
1866
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
Unframed: 76.8 × 135.7 cm (30 1/4 × 53 7/16 in.)

A lone trapper’s cabin crouches in a wide river valley, framed by tall birches and the last golden light of day. Sanford Robinson Gifford — the poet of the Hudson River School’s luminist wing — bathes the scene in a warm atmospheric haze, the broad horizontal composition making the wilderness feel vast, still and inviting.