Object number1864.1.35
The Shrine of Shakespeare
Date1859
Artist
Sanford Robinson Gifford
(American, 1823-1880)
CultureAmerican
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 9 x 15 1/2 in. (22.86 x 39.37 cm)
Framed: 12 1/8 x 18 1/2 x 2 1/4 in. (30.8 x 46.99 x 5.72 cm)
Framed: 12 1/8 x 18 1/2 x 2 1/4 in. (30.8 x 46.99 x 5.72 cm)
Credit LineGift of Matthew Vassar
On View
On viewPeriod19th c
Classification(s)
SignedSigned lower left: S R Gifford
InscribedBy artist, lower left: '59
ProvenanceCollections: Elias MagoonVassar Exhibitions
Exhibition HistoryAll Seasons and Every Light, Vassar College Art Gallery, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, October 14 - December 16, 1983; DeCordova and Dana Museum and Park, Lincoln, MA, February 5 - March 25, 1984; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL, March 25 - July 1, 1984; Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, November 16, 1984 - January 13, 1985;America and the Grand Tour: Sanford Robinson Gifford at Home and Abroad, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, April 17 - June 9, 1991
Label TextDescribed as a "shrine" by actor and producer David Garrick during the Jubilee of 1769, Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon was a veritable pilgrimage site for devotees in the nineteenth century. Gifford visited in July 1855 and recorded his impressions of Holy Trinity Church, Shakespeare's burial site: "[It] is beautifully situated on the banks of a small river. It is large and handsome and is shaded by noble elms, I made a sketch from a further bank." Presumably this sketch was a model for the present work, dated four years later. He added a white swan floating on the river, evoking poet Ben Jonson's tribute to the "Sweet Swan of Avon" in the First Folio, the collected edition of Shakespeare plays published in 1623.
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge.
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