Gifford Beal was born in New York City on January 24, 1879. He enrolled in art classes while attending Barnard Military School, New York, and spent summers studying with William Merritt Chase in Shinnecock Hills, Long Island. His Classmates included Edward Hopper and Rockwell Kent.
On the Hudson at Newburgh depicts a World War I scene in Newburgh, New York—a small town on the Hudson River sixty miles north of New York City where the artist’s parents had a summer home overlooking the river. In this scene, a woman and her children face the soft morning light and watch, from a distance, as a group of soldiers march down to the waiting train—identified by the puff of smoke in the center of the canvas. Unlike most World War I-related paintings which feature parades and celebrations, Beal’s canvas has a more sentimental spirit in its focus on the idealized American family’s personal sacrifice played out in small towns across the country.
