Haverstraw Bay (1868): Art, History and Details

Haverstraw Bay (1868) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Sanford Robinson Gifford (American, 1823–1880).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Located about 40 miles north of New York City, Haverstraw Bay is the widest point on the Hudson River. During the 1860s, it was a prime area for shad fishing, and Gifford’s painting records this activity taking place amid a delicately luminous morning haze.

Object facts

• Title: Haverstraw Bay
• Date: 1868
• Creator attribution: Sanford Robinson Gifford (American, 1823–1880)
• Culture: United States
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Unframed: 24.2 x 50.8 cm (9 1/2 x 20 in.)
• Collection: American - Painting
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2011.43

A detail from the museum

Commercial and recreational fishing for now endangered American shad is currently prohibited on the Hudson River.

Collection credit

Bequest of Dr. Paul J. Vignos Jr.

Further reading listed by the museum

• Gifford, Sanford Robinson, and John Ferguson Weir. A Memorial Catalogue of the Paintings of Sanford Robinson Gifford. New York: Olana Gallery, NY: 1974.
• Weiss, Ila. Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880). Ann Arbor, MI: Xerox University Microfilms, 1977.
• Weiss, Ila. Poetic Landscape: The Art and Experience of Sanford R. Gifford. Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1987.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.