By Gifford Beal
Located in Missouri, MO
Gifford Beal (1879-1956)
"Bareback Act, Old Hippodome" 1950
Lithograph
Signed Lower Right
With original Associated American Artists label verso
image: 6 3/8 x 9 5/8 in. (16.2 x 24.6 cm)
sheet: 12 x 16 in. (30.4 x 40.6 cm)
framed: 17 x 20 in.
Gifford Beal, painter, etcher, muralist, and teacher, was born in New York City in 1879. The son of landscape painter William Reynolds Beal, Gifford Beal began studying at William Merritt Chase's Shinnecock School of Art (the first established school of plein air painting in America) at the age of thirteen, when he accompanied his older brother, Reynolds, to summer classes. He remained a pupil of Chase's for ten years also studying with him in New York City at the artist's private studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building. Later at his father's behest, he attended Princeton University from 1896 to 1900 while still continuing his lessons with Chase. Upon graduation from Princeton he took classes at the Art Students' League, studying with impressionist landscape painter Henry Ward Ranger and Boston academic painter Frank Vincent DuMond. He ended up as President of the Art Students League for fourteen years, "a distinction unsurpassed by any other artist."
His student days were spent entirely in this country. "Given the opportunity to visit Paris en route to England in 1908, he chose to avoid it" he stated, "I didn't trust myself with the delightful life in ParisIt all sounded so fascinating and easy and loose." His subjects were predominately American, and it has been said stylistically "his art is completely American." Gifford achieved early recognition in the New York Art World.
He became an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1908 and was elected to full status of academician in 1914. He was known for garden parties, circuses, landscapes, streets, coasts, flowers and marines. This diversity in subject matter created "no typical or characteristic style to his work."
Beal's style was highly influenced by Chase and Childe Hassam, a long time friend of the Beal family who used to travel "about the countryside with Beal in a car sketching...
Category
1950s American Realist Allan Rohan Crite Figurative Prints