Gifford Beal

Gifford Beal was born in 1879 in New York City. Beginning at age 13, he studied with the accomplished American artist William Merritt Chase at the Shinnecock School of Art and later at the Tenth Street Studio and the New York School of Art. Beal graduated from Princeton University in 1900 and continued his training at the Art Students League with George Bridgman and Frank Vincent DuMond. Beal served as president of the Art Students League from 1914 to 1929. He later lived in Rockport, Maine, where he died in 1956. Under the Works Progress Administration, Beal was commissioned to paint murals for the U.S. Post Offices in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Crestline, Ohio, and for the Department of the Interior building in Washington, D.C. He also exhibited at the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.