Marine painter and etcher George Albert Gale was born in Bristol, Rhode Island. He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Gale earned his bread upon the waters, serving as a seaman for the American and Hawaiian Steamship Line and Quartermaster of the Bristol (RI) Ferry, also working as a boat builder and on the George Washington Bridge in New York. His work is held by a number of institutions including the Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design, the Nantucket Whaling Museum, and the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut. He died in Barrington, Rhode Island.