Scope and Contents

Reynolds Beal material includes a sketchbook containing sketches of ships, entitled "Cruising Aboard U.S.S. School Ship St. Mary's," 1901, scrapbook pages of marine etchings and photographs, a Christmas card, personal photographs, exhibition catalogs, and clippings. Gifford Beal material includes: photographs of him and one of his work, exhibition catalogs, and clippings. Also included are a photograph of the Beal family, ca. 1890, writings about the the family, selected photographs of the Beals from albums kept by Mrs. Thaddeus Beal, including some of Wilellyn, the William Beal family's summer home in Newburgh, N.Y. with gardens designed by sons Gifford and Reynolds, and Echo Lawn, home of Thaddeus Beal; and miscellaneous printed material.

Biographical / Historical

Reynolds Beal (1866-1951) was a painter and printmaker in Rockport, Massachusetts known for his marine and landscape paintings. He studied naval architecture at Cornell University before going on to study painting with William Merritt Chase in Shinnecock, Long Island and with Henry Ward Ranger in Europe. Beal is considered a modernist and he helped found the Society of Independent Artists and the New Society of Artists alongside George Bellows, Childe Hassam, John Sloan, William Glackens, and Maurice Prendergast.

Painter and muralist Gifford Beal (1879-1956) began his art training at 13 when he accompanied his older brother, Reynolds Beal, to the Shinnecock School of Art for classes with William Merritt Chase. Gifford Beal continued to study with Chase for ten years. Beal attended college at Princeton University and also took classes at the Art Students League with George Bridgman and Frank Vincent DuMond.

Related Materials

The Archives of American Art holds the Gifford Beal sketches, sketchbooks, and papers, 1889-2001 and the microfilmed Reynolds Beal papers, 1874-1939.