Gifford Beal
American, 1879 - 1956The Abandoned Quarry, ca. 1951
Not on view
Oil on canvas
Dimensions35 3/4 × 58 1/2 in. (90.8 × 148.6 cm)
Gift of Anthony E. and Richard D. van Benschoten in memory of their mother Elizabeth H. Beal, 1999.12
Gifford Beal was one of a group of independent Realists who later became associated with Robert Henri's extended circle. He received traditional training from William Merritt Chase, with whom he studied from 1892 through 1901. From a family of substantial financial means, Beal attended Princeton University at the same time he pursued his studies in art, graduating in 1900. He began exhibiting at the National Academy of Design in 1901, which he continued to do regularly for the rest of his life.
As a landscapist, he painted many images of New York City and the surrounding region, particularly Central Park, and is also especially noted for his landscapes of the Gloucester and Rockport areas in Massachusetts. In his later work, he embraced a more expressive and spirited use of color and line, and his brushwork is blunter, with more vitality and freedom than in the earlier period. A move toward a more abstracted and simplified approach is indicative of his exposure to and acceptance of some of the basic precepts of Modernist painting. All of these tendencies can be seen in The Abandoned Quarry, a work painted a few years before his death in 1956. The large scale of The Abandoned Quarry is indicative of its significance and Beal's intention to use it as an exhibition piece. The work was one of his final achievements, winning the Samuel Finley Breese Morse Gold Medal at the National Academy's annual exhibition in 1954.
