The expressions of "Little Jewel" paintings, Park Bench artist, and Historical Central Park Scenes are some of the descriptions illustrating the works of John Gambino, an Italian cityscape artist who arrived in New York in 1940 and remained until 1954, when he recorded the summer scenes of New York City. Gambino always painted in the summer from the vantage point of a park bench painter.
John Gambino's scenes are primarily of Central Park, which include the Duck Pond, Belvedere Castle, the Plaza, and the Cloisters. There are also scenes of South Ferry, Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. The collection consists of over 80 paintings painted during the war years and post-war era when the New York skyline consisted of concrete, just before the glass and steel emergence of the new buildings of New York City.

Julien Alberts, a fellow painter and colleague of John Gambino, saved his paintings over the decades. Little is known of John Gambino other than that he apparently returned to Italy in 1954 and left behind a large body of work with Alberts. Gambino's 14-year visual record of New York City has a charming theme of a bygone New York. The lone figure is recorded as "Dorothy," who apparently became a model or central figure that so often appears in Gambino's paintings. At other times there are couples or an elderly person walking past young lovers with the timeless message of the transitory nature of life. Buildings remain as monuments of human existence in the most developed urban city in the world. Some buildings in Gambino's paintings have been replaced by the modern structures of our time. Through the experience of John Gambino's little jewel paintings is a haunting wisp of past summers in New York City.

Steve Kennedy is an art dealer in historic American paintings with an emphasis on Maurice Prendergast, Oscar Bluemner, and American Illustration art of the 20th century. He established the Richard Lillis Scholarship in 1994 for the Art Student's League, pioneered Pulp Art with Robert Lesser culminating in the Pulp Painting Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 2003.