Born in Naushon Island, Massachusetts, Robert Swain Gifford was an American landscape painter who studied with Van Beest, a Dutch marine painter in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Gifford settled in New York in 1866. He visited the West Coast in 1869 in order to illustrate Picturesque America. Later he sketched in Europe, North Africa, and Egypt. Moorland and the seashore were his favorite subjects. He became a member of the National Academy of Design in 1878. Gifford's paintings hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Corcoran Gallery.
Bibliography
The Columbia Encyclopedia, 2nd edition, c. 1950
