Robert F. Gilder Landscape Oil Painting

Item Details

Robert Fletcher Gilder (Nebraska/New York, 1856 – 1940)
Untitled (landscape)
Oil painting on academy board
Signed to lower right
Label to verso from Probate Court, Nebraska

Robert Fletcher Gilder was born in New York in 1856 and attended The Gunnery School in Washington, Connecticut, and then studied painting with Hudson River School artist August Will (1834 – 1910). After personal difficulties he became estranged from his family and settled in Nebraska in 1887, where he worked as a journalist, archeologist and painter. He worked as a reporter for the Omaha World Herald for over thirty years, and for twelve years as an archaeologist for the University of Nebraska Museum in Lincoln, even though he had no formal training in the subject. In the early 1900s he returned to painting, and in 1916 built a studio in Fontanelle Forest near Omaha. He painted the local landscape, but also loved to travel, often painting the Missouri river bluffs, and the deserts near Tuscon, Arizona. He preferred to paint en plein air and then finish the works later in the studio, and sold his work through the Whitmore Gallery.

Condition

- small area of craquelure to lower right; scattered accretion; nicks, abrasions and finish wear to frame.

Dimensions

- measures frame; visible image measures 13.25" Wx 10.25" H.

Item #

ITMG104930