Blank page; verso: Small Landscape; Chickens 1864

Editor: This sketch, "Blank page; verso: Small Landscape; Chickens," by Sanford Robinson Gifford, is a delicate study. The chickens evoke a sense of domesticity. What cultural echoes do you hear in this seemingly simple sketch? Curator: The chicken, often a symbol of rural life, can also represent vulnerability and abundance. Gifford's loose rendering contrasts with the bird’s symbolic weight in various cultures. What does the combination of landscape and fowl suggest to you? Editor: Perhaps a grounding in the everyday, even within an expansive vista? Curator: Precisely. Think about the chicken as a common, almost universal animal. Juxtapose that with the Hudson River School's emphasis on the sublime. Does this pairing create tension, or harmony? Editor: Harmony, I think, a connection between the grand and the humble. I hadn't considered the chicken's symbolic resonance before.