By the 1840s, American artists favored landscape over portraiture. Sanford Gifford refers to the new priority in an 1874 letter, recalling his walking tours in the Catskill Mountains and the Berkshire Hills in 1846. He made “a good many sketches from nature [which] together with the great admiration I felt for the works of Cole developed my strong interest in Landscape Art, and I opened my eyes to a keener perception and more intelligent enjoyment of Nature. Having once enjoyed the absolute freedom of the Landscape painter’s life, I was unable to return to portrait painting. From this time my direction in art was determined.” As painters filled the demand for landscapes, portraiture became largely the province of photography, starting with the daguerreotype, which was introduced in 1839.