This virtual event was an exploration of the remarkable artist and mariner, George A. Gale, with Curator of Maritime History Michael P. Dyer. Expanding on a New Bedford Whaling Museum exhibition and publication, George Gale: A Sea-nurtured Artist, eminently describes the life and work of Gale of Barrington, Rhode Island.

Ships, boats, sailors, seafaring, shore-side trades, and the final years of Yankee whaling were the principal subjects of his lifetime dedication to drawing, etching, and painting. He developed his passion for marine subjects growing up in a seaport, and cultivated it through his later work, both as an artist and a professional mariner. His work paralleled significant trends in the U.S. to preserve knowledge of the country’s maritime roots, and along with several of his contemporaries, Gale succeeded in creating a lasting, documentary, body of work of this important chapter in the American experience.

Caption: George Gale, Heave and bust ‘er. Copper etching showing the crew of a schooner heaving at the brake windlass while taking in the anchor. The first mates stands at the bow watching the progress of the work. Gift of Mary D. and Christopher G. Gale.