Gifford Beal (1879-1956)

Gifford Beal’s Lobstermen on the Shore is a powerful example from a body of works that the artist completed in the 1920s and 1930s on summer trips to Rockport, Massachusetts. Jeffrey Wechsler wrote of this series of fishermen paintings: “As a group, these works bespeak a profound respect for the individuals depicted and the labor they engaged in...His painting methodology bends to the service of his subject matter, the continuity of the fisherman’s hard labor set against and in the permanent presence of the sea.” (Gifford Beal: At the Water’s Edge, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1999, p. 3)

In the present work, a trio of men carry their lobster cages down to the sea, where a dark silhouette of a fourth figure is already at the dock. Set against a vivid, sun-dappled sea of complementary oranges and blues and a deep red sky, the deeply shadowed, monumental figures in Lobstermen on the Shore are painted in a large scale format that heightens the visual drama, though the physical action of the men appears slow and steady. The work is also imbued with an impersonal atmosphere as the three brooding figures in the foreground are turned away from the viewer. The single figure in the distance, who does face the viewer, has his face concealed in dark shadow. Wechsler commented on this recurring aspect throughout the fishermen works, noting that when “Beal averts the faces of these figures from the viewer; their role as timeless archetype is emphasized over their individuality.” (Gifford Beal: At the Water’s Edge, p. 5)