A letter from the recognized expert on the artist, Dr. Ila Weiss, accompanies this lot.

According to Gifford scholar Dr. Ila Weiss, the present example likely served as a preliminary study for the artist's exhibition piece Windsor Castle (1860)located in the collection of the de Young Museum, San Francisco, California. Gifford spent a few days in Windsor, England, in July 1855 and made three pencil sketches of the castle. One of the drawings pictured the castle from the river Thames, which likely prompted the sunrise series to which the present painting belongs. Dr. Weiss writes, "The study tries a far more dramatic effect of sunrise than that chosen by the artist for the exhibition piece, an approach not without precedent for Gifford. There may have been one or more lost intermediary paintings, likely to have been about half the size of and closer in effect to the final version, in keeping with his practice." (Unpublished letter, September 2019)