Palmer’s Island Lighthouse of New Bedford, Mass, Painted in the 1880’s, oil on panel, signed lower left: C.H. Gifford. Diego Salazar gold-leaf frame. Overall size: 9 3/4 x 19 in. Sight size: 5 1/2 x 14 3/4 in. Charles Henry Gifford was essentially self-taught but was exposed to the rich artistic milieu of New Bedford. Alfred van Beest, William Bradford, Albert Bierstadt, R. Swain Gifford, and Albert Pinkham Ryder were among the artists who lived, worked, or exhibited in the city. A typical Luminist painter, Gifford concerned himself with both subtle and dramatic effects of light, stillness, precise realism, and softly glowing surfaces. He is perhaps best known for the small canvases measuring about nine by fourteen inches that he called "my little gems". He painted along the New England Coast, including Nantucket, Cuttyhunk, and the Elizabeth Islands, and inland to the White Mountains, Niagara Falls and Lake George.