“Few among our present-day artists have been more successful [than Gifford Beal] in seizing the fleeting shape of the breaking wave dashing its spray against the jagged rocks, or the long white combers as the incoming tide urges their further encroachments upon the beach. He seems to have a special facility for depicting on canvas the very motion of the water, and of expressing with his brush and pigments its life and pulsating vitality.”

- Ralph W. Carey, “Some Paintings by Gifford Beal” in The International Studio, August, 1911.

Gifford Beal travelled widely in the first decades of the twentieth century, from Central America and the Caribbean Islands, to New York City and coastal New England. Preceding his travels, Beal studied under George Bridgman and Frank Vincent DuMond at the Art Students League, and with William Merritt Chase at both his New York and Shinnecock schools. He was an active member of the Salmagundi Club and the American Water Color Society, and exhibited regularly with The National Academy of Design after his first appearance in 1901. He is best known for his sunlit seascapes created during summers in Massachusetts and Maine.