Gifford Beal

Gifford Beal was the brother of the somewhat lesser-known artist Reynolds Beal, and encouraged his brother to study in Europe. Their father was the landscape painter William Reynolds Beal (1838-1912), while their niece, Marjorie Acker, was also a famous painter, who was married to the renowned art critic and collector, Duncan Phillips (1886–1966). Gifford Beal studied in New York and Long Island, eventually earning his doctorate at Princeton. He then traveled throughout Europe, Africa, and Central America. In the early 1930s he taught at the Art Students League, whose president he had been previously. Beal was a very successful and dedicated painter in oil, watercolor, and pastel, whose style was heavily influenced by French Impressionism.

Beal depicted city scenes, landscapes, hunting and circus scenes in heroic and romantic paintings with an interest in light and color. Afterglow is an etching from 1931 sized 22.9 x 30.1 cm (sheet 30.5 x 40.7 cm).