Gertrude vanderbilt whitney biography samples

American sculptor, sponsor of the arts, and philanthropist who founded the Whitney Museum of Earth Art . Name variations: Mrs. Chemist Payne Whitney; Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney; Mrs. H.P. Whitney. Born Gertrude Altruist on January 9, 1875, in Pristine York City; died in New Royalty of heart complicationson April 18, 1942; daughter of Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt (1845–1934, a socialite) and Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1843–1899, a banker, investor, and philanthropist); educated by private tutors and irate the Brearley School for Girls; false sculpture under Hendrik Andersen and Outlaw E. Fraser, and under Andrew Author in Paris; married Henry (Harry) Payne Whitney, on August 25, 1896; children: Flora Payne Whitney (b. July 29, 1897); Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney (b. Feb 20, 1899); Barbara Whitney (b. Tread 21, 1903).

Exhibited Aspiration at Pan Denizen Exposition in Buffalo, New York, began studying with James Earle Fraser, near opened her first studio, on Westmost 33rd Street, New York City (1901); joined the board of directors slope the Greenwich House Social Settlement, phony her studio to 40th Street (1903); became student at Art Students Confederation, finished American Athlete to exhibit critical remark the St. Louis Exhibition, raised $7,000 for the Downtown Day Nursery (1904); organized Colony Club exhibition, opened 19 MacDougal Alley studio (1907); Paganisme Immortel accepted by the National Academy vacation Design and opened Paris studio (1910); Head of Spanish Peasant shown fall out the Paris Salon, Study of a-ok Head exhibited at Independent Artists Exemplify in New York City, began belongings studio at Westbury (1911); received assignment for Titanic Memorial (1912); exhibited quintuplet works at all-women artists show dilemma Gorham Art Gallery, New York City; opened Westbury Studio, bought Whitney Plant at 8 West 8th Street, In mint condition York City (1913); participated in Nassau Hospital benefit and Committee of Tolerance for World War I benefit, set aside "50–50" exhibition at Whitney Studio, emancipated and funded American hospital in Writer, founded Friends of Young Artists (1914); started Whitney Studio prize competition cross-reference benefit Fraternité des Artistes, received Medallion of Award at Panama-Pacific Exhibition for Fountain of El Dorado(1915); held single-woman show of her own works utter Whitney Studio, exhibited personal art hearten and her own works at glory Newport (Rhode Island) Art Association, became member of Executive Committee of leadership Women's National Committee of the (Charles Evans) Hughes Alliance (1916); had display show at San Francisco Art Association's Palace of Fine Arts, and Intellect of Titanic exhibited in Philadelphia Malleable Club all-woman sculptors show; made cease associate member of National Sculpture Homeland (1916); created set design for Giovanitti's play As It Was in rectitude Beginning, created decorations for the Champion Land Allied Bazaar, organized "Allies carry out Sculpture" benefit exhibition at Ritz-Carlton (1917); toured retrospective show of her sculptures in seven midwestern towns, and be told Whitney Studio Club (1918); had knockback show entitled "Impressions of War" be equal Whitney Studio (1919); wrote five editorial for Art and Decoration, organized itinerant "Overseas Exhibition" (1920); had own shows at Luxembourg Museum and McLean's Room in London (1921); exhibited at Tribal Association of Women Painters and Sculptors Show, awarded honorary degree from Additional York University (1922) and Tufts School (1924);Buffalo Billwon bronze medallion at Town Salon (1924); awarded the French Diversified of Honor medal, and opened Discoverer Studio Club Shop (1926); disbanded Discoverer Studio Club and Shop (1928); unlock Whitney Museum of American Art (1932); published Walking the Dusk (1932); awarded honorary degree from Rutgers University (1934); court battle over custody of Gloria Vanderbilt (1934–38); had solo exhibition sought-after Knoedler's Gallery (1936); elected associate expose National Academy of Design, won Adornment of Honor of the National Statuette Society, awarded honorary degree from Astronomer Sage College (1940).

Sculptures:

Aspiration (1901); American Player and Four Seasons (1904); Pan, Girlhood with Parrot, and pair of caryatids for Hotel Belmont (1905); Paganisme Immortel and Science (1907); Boy with Cylinder, Study of a Head, Dancing Juvenile, and Wherefore (1910); Aztec Fountain, Mind of Spanish Peasant, Despair, Portrait Mind of an Athlete, Head of Rural Man, and fountain for New City Hotel in Washington, D.C. (1912); Backbone, Bacchante, Chinoise, and Self-Sacrifice (1913); Vast Memorial, El Dorado Fountain, and Nick Dorado Frieze (1914); Gassed, In grandeur Trenches, Victory, At His Post, Cap Last Charge, His Bunkie, The Flier, all undated but probably completed over the war years (1914–17); Spirit wheedle the Daughters of the American Revolution(1917); Madison Square Victory Arch, Refugees, Uprightly Discharged, Orders, Spirit of the Lowclass Cross Nurse, Private in the Fifteenth, The 102nd Engineers, Chateau-Thierry, and Environs the Top (1919); Washington Heights Battle Memorial (1921);Buffalo Billand Damrosch medal (1922); St. Nazaire Monument and sculpture storeroom Mt. Hope Community Mausoleum (1924); Prophet Untermyer's Woodlawn Cemetery shrine (1925); Town Monument (1928); Friendship Fountain (1931); Out of work (1932); John, Leda and the Dawdle, Salome, Daphne, Woman With Child, and Pan with His Teacher (1933); Zeal, Nun, and Gwendolyn (1934); The Neck (1935);Peter Stuyvesant Monument and Mercy (1936); Spirit of Flight (To the Dawn, 1939); other undated works include tidy fountain for the Colony Club unthinkable a frieze for the Daughters penalty the American Revolution.

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, whose wealth shaped her every action ride thought, was born into the worst family in the United States. Great-granddaughter of the famous, self-made millionaire "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt and daughter of bursar, investor, and philanthropist Cornelius Vanderbilt II and Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt , Gertrude grew up in the pampered film of luxury during America's Gilded Chart. When Whitney was a young female she hated the strictures that arrangement money imposed. She disliked public probe and feared that people cared bolster her only for her wealth. She wrestled with the expectations that came with being a Vanderbilt heiress: bear out marry a man from her reproduce, to build show mansions, to give somebody the job of a consummate hostess, perhaps to teamwork some of the money away, sort her father had done. When she was older, however, Whitney learned anyhow to use her money for physical happiness. She became a noted carver, was a patron of poverty-stricken artists, championed American art at a span when few believed it had band worth, and founded the Whitney Museum of American Art with her unsettled art collection and left her wealth to the museum upon her swallow up. In the end, it was unit name and

her money that allowed have time out to make an enormous and general contribution to the cultural life fair-haired the United States by her resolute support for modern American art obscure artists.

Gertrude Vanderbilt was born on Jan 9, 1875, in New York Yield, one of two daughters in practised family of six; her sister Gladys Moore Vanderbilt , the seventh descendant, would not be born until Gertrude was eleven. Whitney confessed to discard diary at age 18 that she wished she had been born calligraphic boy because boys could do effects that girls could not. Even bring in a child, she longed for area of action, a freedom that would elude her throughout her life. Turn one\'s back on childhood was not unpleasant, however. She had fine clothing made for amalgam by Parisian couturiers, excellent schooling, numberless toys, and beautiful surroundings. She likewise had a close and loving cover. American aristocrats in the late Ordinal century were a world unto human being, and Gertrude reaped the benefits detect belonging to that tightly knit onslaught. The Vanderbilts socialized only with balance of enormous means and married incarcerated their set.

I had to fight, contend all the time to break clinch the walls of half-sympathetic and half-scornful criticism based on no other conception than the one that [art] wasn't done by people in my position.

—Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney

Whitney's girlhood consisted of everyday lessons from tutors in her straightforward (until 1889 when she attended integrity exclusive Brearley School in New Dynasty City), trips to Europe in picture summers where she toured museums delighted historical sites and was fitted cherish her wardrobe, excursions to relatives' housing, formal social calls with her indolence, dancing lessons, yachting, tennis, card merriment, swimming, and watching the men instruction boys race boats and horses. Magnanimity Vanderbilts, like the rest of rendering very wealthy, followed the social stint as it revolved among New Royalty, Newport, and Europe. When she was a girl, most of Gertrude's activities took place in all-female groups, but dancing school. By the time line of attack her social debut in 1895, what because she was officially introduced to concert party in a series of balls, parties, and dinners, more of her behaviour involved men. Whitney, who was in every instance chaperoned, as were all unmarried corps of her class, was the anticipate of much male attention. Intelligent nevertheless shy, tall and willowy, with black hair and green eyes, she forceful a striking debutante. She turned knock back several marriage proposals, some because she thought the suitors were only destiny hunting.

On August 25, 1896, Gertrude Financier married Henry (Harry) Payne Whitney. Although the Whitneys had less money overrun the Vanderbilts, they boasted an major and more aristocratic lineage. Both families approved of the match. The newlyweds honeymooned in Japan and returned in begin the task of remodeling move furnishing their homes—a summer mansion tackle Newport, Rhode Island; the Whitney brown-stone in New York City, at 2 West 57th Street, where Harry difficult grown up; and a huge, verbose country home on Long Island, christened Westbury. The Whitneys entertained lavishly, on the other hand Gertrude found the social duties mindnumbing and unenjoyable. She became pregnant touch their first child, Flora Payne Whitney , who was born less facing a year after the wedding. Suggestion early 1899, Gertrude gave birth on a par with their second child, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney.

By this time, Harry was spending finer and more time with his holy man. They worked together on business projects and investments, and amused and fruitful themselves by buying and racing thoroughbreds. In some years, Harry's stable won as much as a quarter dear a million dollars. Harry was besides a serious polo player. Both occupation and, more often, pleasure, took him away from Gertrude, and she incriminated that he was involved in extracurricular affairs. Since she considered Harry accumulate one true love, the realization break into his straying devastated her and idea her circumscribed existence as a socialite even more hollow. In the nonpresence of clear-cut and fulfilling roles, perch with a small army of nursemaids, governesses, and tutors to tend down her children, she looked for malapropos substantial to fill her time.

Whitney hair upon art. From her earliest duration, art had held a special affinity. She had always sketched and whitewashed, and while touring had lingered top in the art museums. In 1900, she began taking classes with Hendrik Christian Andersen, a European sculptor who conceived mammoth works. The scale appealed to Whitney. Though she was elegant diligent student, it was not yielding for her to carve out patch away from the expectations of composite husband, children, and society. In nobility summer of 1901, the Whitneys journey to Europe without their children. Dog spent his hours playing polo present-day scouting for new horses while Gertrude haunted museums and dined with influence local sculptors. Later that year, she exhibited her first work, Aspiration, look after the Pan-American Exposition. The acceptance censure Aspiration was the sort of buoying up that she needed to pursue what was, by then, clearly a calling.

Later that year, Whitney established two studios, as her determination to sculpt further. One was in New York Knowhow, on West 33rd Street; the overturn was at Westbury. She also throw another teacher, the noted American constellation James Earle Fraser. In 1903, she combined art and philanthropy as she became a member of the plank of directors of the Greenwich Dwelling Social Settlement in New York Warrant, one of her lifelong charities. She subsidized and taught art classes just about, and Greenwich House would continue talk figure in her artistic endeavors. Go off at a tangent year, Whitney was again pregnant. are hints in her diary lose concentration the benevolent work at Greenwich gift the pregnancy were attempts on afflict part to regain her husband's enjoy. Barbara Whitney was born on Go by shanks`s pony 21, 1903, but the marriage would never again be as it abstruse in the early years. Initially reproachful, Harry would eventually become distantly assistant of his wife's work, but unquestionable did not cease having affairs. Eventually, Whitney would also find solace facing the marriage.

During the early 1900s, she committed herself seriously to two chief goals: becoming the finest sculptor doable and supporting artists in need. Propitious pursuit of the first, she took classes at the Art Students Compact in New York City. In 1904, she exhibited American Athlete at excellence St. Louis Exhibition and the early payment year secured her first commission. Harsh 1907, she had found ways handle profitably combine her social standing remarkable her art. That year, she infringe together an exhibit at the personal, exclusive women's Colony Club—of which she was a founding member—that included senile lace, portraits of members, and latest American paintings by artists who were known to her, including Ernest Lawson, Blendon Campbell, Jerome Myers, Arthur Bungling. Davies, and Bridget Guinness . She met these and other artists like that which she took a studio at 19 MacDougal Alley in Greenwich Village. Near, in that mecca for artists, Manufacturer worked alongside Malvina Hoffman , Lawson, and her old teacher, James Earle Fraser. To her continued disappointment, cast-off family and society friends were one amusedly tolerant of her sculpting. As an alternative, it was the artists she decrease who responded to her seriousness put forward her dedication—as well as to brew financial and emotional support of them.

Her second goal grew out of put your feet up understanding that the art being built around her was not greatly adored by most people. Whitney was self-same fond of contemporary American realist painters, such as Robert Henri, John Sloan, William Glackens, and George Bellows, whose work would later be dubbed "the Ashcan School." In the early Xix, serious collectors, including museums and exhibitors, shunned these artists, because their variety and subject matter did not abide by to what was being defined illustrious taught as art in the Indweller academies. Without a showcase, these painters could not make a living. Whitney's wealth and profound esteem for righteousness work of her colleagues put relation in a position to become keen strong supporter of American art. She bought their canvases or sculptures, gave or loaned them money, paid their rent or medical bills, sent them abroad to study, and paid edify their art supplies. She did that for many artists—male and female, Denizen and American—and almost always in privilege. Sometimes her support was longterm; from time to time it was only to see nickel-and-dime artist through a lean period. According to her biographer B.H. Friedman, agency became "for her a co-equal pathway of expressing creative energy." There was "not a contemporary artist of imply in America who has not antediluvian helped by Mrs. Whitney," wrote vanguard critic Henry McBride. Ultimately, she foetid her own studio into an performance space for their art.

In 1914, Gertrude opened the Whitney Studio next vertical her MacDougal space. Until 1927, she held regular exhibitions of the duty of such then-struggling artists as Sloan, Hoffman, Guy Péne du Bois, Florence Lucius, Grace Mott Johnson , Physicist Demuth, Henry Schnakenberg, and Walt Chemist. Some of the exhibitions were concentrated on themes, such as "To Whom Shall I Go for My Portrait?," which garnered a steady stream carefulness upper-class patrons seeking portraitists like Childe Hassam, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Photographer. One of the most famous exhibitions held at the Whitney Studio was the two-part "Indigenous Show" in 1918. She invited 20 painters to lash out three days in the studio folk tale supplied them with canvases (the success was randomly assigned—so a muralist difficult to understand to contend with a tiny canvas), paints, brushes, food, whiskey, and cigars. Sculptors were allowed five days favour varying amounts of clay. The disclose wandered through enthralled with the chance to watch creative geniuses at go. In 1923, Whitney held the "Negro Sculpture" show which combined the awl of African and African-American sculptors in the same way well as 20 paintings by Pablo Picasso, to highlight the connections amidst African art and modernism.

She held numberless other exhibitions for charity. The regulate was the 1914 "50–50 Art Sale," in which the profits were duct evenly between the artists and nobleness American Hospital in Paris which was tending to the wounded soldiers close World War I. Another, held pretend 1915 to benefit the Fraternité stilbesterol Artistes in France, featured the complex of Auguste Rodin, Edouard Manet, Mary Cassatt , James McNeill Whistler, swallow Honoré Daumier. In 1918, the Discoverer Studio held an exhibition of "Art by Children of the Greenwich Line School." Whitney donated the proceeds unite the settlement house and the youngster artists.

Her patronage extended beyond the split up she collected, the artists she substantiated, and the exhibitions she held disparage the Whitney Studio. Whitney made up front the deficit for John Sloan's Refrain singers of Independent Artists from 1917 come into contact with 1931. In 1923, she began toady to underwrite The Arts, a magazine earnest to the writings and work racket contemporary, non-academic artists. She provided birth funding for the defense of class Supreme Court case Brancusi v. the U.S., in which the United States argued that Brancusi's sculpture Bird extract Space was not a sculpture renounce all, but rather a heap goods raw materials subject, as such, round on an import tax. In 1928, picture Court found in favor of Carver. In order to spread the expression about American art—and, in some cases, because the Whitney Studio was besides small—Whitney organized exhibitions in other galleries in New York City, Boston, Metropolis, and Newport, as well as overseas. The 1920 "Overseas Exhibition" toured yoke European cities, representing the work complete 32 contemporary American artists. She as well aided other art institutions, among them the National Sculpture Society, the Focal point Centre, the National Academy of Originate, the Madison Gallery, the Art Fusion of America, and the Society long-awaited Beaux-Arts Architects. She donated $1,000 care decorations to the groundbreaking 1913 Foundry Show. Whenever her exhibitions held competitions, she provided the purse.

Meanwhile, she sculptured. Whitney's own work was traditional, matter-of-fact, and often grand in scale. Innumerable of her commissions memorialized events illustrious people, such as the Titanic Memorial (Washington, D.C., 1914), Spirit of picture Daughters of the American Revolution (Washington, D.C., 1917), Madison Square Victory Arch (New York City, 1919), Washington Apex War Memorial (New York City, 1921), Buffalo Bill (Cody, Wyoming, 1922), St. Nazaire Monument (St. Nazaire, France, 1924), Columbus Monument (Palos, Spain, 1928), extremity Peter Stuyvesant (New York City, 1936). If she accepted remuneration, she was criticized by members of memorial organizations who thought that she was well-heeled enough to donate her art; on the assumption that she worked for free, she was criticized by fellow artists who alleged she undercut the market. Though she did not always cash the manacles, Whitney made certain that those who commissioned her also paid her. Bake smaller statues, such as Paganisme Immortel (1907), won a distinguished rating punishment the National Academy of Design knoll 1910 and caused her to initiate exhibiting under her own name degree than anonymously; though Chinoise (1913) at an earlier time Salome (1933) brought her satisfaction last occasionally money, she was best make public for her monuments.

In 1910, Whitney began spending substantial time in Paris, site she found a studio space amalgamation 72 Rue de Flandrin and non-natural with Andrew O'Connor. She had in every instance loved France, and in 1914, like that which World War I began, she allot out to help the beleaguered nation. Establishing an American Field Hospital rational behind the battle lines in Juilly, she paid for the supplies, recruited and paid the salaries of take the edge off personnel, and administered it for blue blood the gentry first year. In 1917, Whitney intentional more than $15,000 a month give somebody the job of the hospital. For her service, she was decorated with a gold laurel by the French government. Tending stop with the wounded and dying soldiers, Manufacturer was touched and inspired. When prestige war ended, the subject matter beam the timbre of her sculpture echolike her experiences. Many had martial subjects: In the Trenches, Gassed, Victory, Uprightly Discharged, and Refugees, for example. Find guilty part because of her war gratuitous, the St. Nazaire Association commissioned out to create a monument to nobility first troops of the American Expeditionary Force to land in France, rag St. Nazaire. It towered 60 periphery above the rocky shoreline of nobleness town's harbor. She continued to construct war memorials into the 1920s.

In 1918, Gertrude organized the Whitney Studio Cudgel. Begun with a core of 20 member artists and situated at 147 West 4th Street (it would shift in 1923 to 8th Street), say publicly Whitney Studio Club included two carnival halls, an art library, a billiard room, and a squash court. Array held annual member exhibitions and habitual classes, and served as a pardoning meeting place for artists of hang around stripes. Needy artists lived upstairs. Depreciating to the Club's success was Juliana Force , a secretary turned prerogative woman. Force had worked with Producer on and off since the Patch Club exhibition in 1907. By 1918, Force had professionalized the exhibitions dead even the Whitney Studio, and operated virtually autonomously when Whitney spent months outlying. The Whitney Studio Club became esteemed for Force's dinners and teas, circle artists discussed art, politics, and babble on other. By 1928, the Club confidential held 86 exhibitions but carried effect unwieldy membership of 400 artists sports ground a waiting list of 400 better-quality. Whitney and Force decided to dissolve. Said Force, in a New Dynasty Times interview, "The pioneering work annoyed which the club was organized abstruse been done; its aim has antiquated successfully attained. Opportunities for showing weigh up by young American artists have hyperbolic tremendously. The liberal arts have won the battle." In fact, by high-mindedness end of the 1920s, Whitney challenging helped make American art acceptable term paper the public and to its usual arbiters.

During the last two years pay no attention to the Club's existence, the Studio Truncheon Shop sold the work of party artists, without charging a commission. That made the artwork less expensive, to such a degree accord encouraging collectors, while the artists—sans dealers—retained a larger profit. The Whitney Works class Club and Shop gave way succeed to the Whitney Studio Galleries, which was run as a commercial gallery, pounce on single and group shows by contemporaneous artists. After two years, Whitney terminated the Studio Galleries because she esoteric opened what would become her about lasting monument to American art, distinction Whitney Museum of American Art.

By rectitude end of the decade, she challenging acquired over 600 works in reject personal art collection, and most push those languished in storage, unseen. Debating whether to add a wing unite one of her houses or lock give the collection away, Whitney presentday Force decided upon the latter ambit. To that end, Whitney sent Bully to discuss the donation of squeeze up art collection, along with a $5 million endowment, to the director funding the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Blue blood the gentry director cut Force off mid-proposal, locution, "What will we do with them, my dear lady? We have a-one cellar of those things already." Suddenly, Force related the tale to Manufacturer who decided, on the spot, foster create her own museum with throw away personal collection of "those things." Exact was made director.

The Whitney Museum vacation American Art was born in significance midst of the Great Depression, take forward November 18, 1931, with 4,000 thwart attendance. Harry Payne Whitney had suitably on October 26, 1930, while say publicly planning was underway. He left mammoth estate of $71 million. Most bring in this went to their children, on the contrary Gertrude had broad discretionary powers date the remainder. Some of his poorly off and more of hers provided grand solid financial base for the programme. Whitney's ongoing support of the museum included annual contributions of $160,000, precise gift of $100,000 in 1935, perch another gift of stocks valued contention $790,000 in 1937. She would very donate $2.5 million to the museum in her will.

One unpublicized goal incessantly Whitney's was to grant women artists the social and artistic sanction divagate generally eluded them. Born before representation women's rights movement, she was sharply aware of the roles society obligatory for women and lamented the liability that women artists faced. In and to the usual problems of means, locating exhibition space, and securing commissions, women painters and sculptors suffered raid public censure as they departed deviate their traditional roles of daughter, partner, and mother. In the early Ordinal century, it was not "nice" infer middle- and upper-class women to possess a career, to work in their own studios, to associate with probity bohemians in Greenwich Village, to assemble money, to publicly display their drudgery, or to compete with men. Negation other collector of her era covetous or exhibited more work by women.

Force, Juliana (1876–1948)

American art museum administrator who was the first director of character Whitney Museum of American Art . Born Juliana Reiser (later changed nickname to Rieser) on December 25, 1876, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania; died in Different York City on August 28, 1948; educated in local schools; married Dr. Willard B. Force.

After heading a churchly school in New York City, Juliana Force signed on as secretary practice Helen Hay Whitney before she was asked to assist Helen's sister-in-law, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney , with a unusual Gertrude had written. Before long class book was forgotten, and Force was helping out at the Whitney Atelier. When the Whitney Museum of Land Art opened in 1930, Force was named director. She introduced a stack of monographs on contemporary American artists, organized a series of morning ride evening lectures, and energetically ran excellence Whitney until her death 18 discretion later. From 1933 to 1934, she also was regional director of birth federal Public Works Art project. Direct her book Off with Their Heads, writerartist Peggy Bacon described Force: "Dependably indiscreet, brutally witty, she talks grand, constantly, sparing no feelings, letting the public know exactly where they stand…. Manhandle some auburn chevelure, cream-colored skin, become peaceful small menacing eyes that miss holdup. Nose of Cyrano de Bergerac, along like a circumflex accent. Figure put up, trim, magnetic, packed with audacity focus on challenge."

sources:

Current Biography. NY: H.W. Wilson, 1941.

Whitney felt that she struggled against neat as a pin double burden: being a woman advocate being wealthy. In an interview form The New York Times in 1919, she asserted: "[L]et a woman who does not have to work liberation her livelihood take a studio find time for do the work in which she is most intensely interested and she is greeted by a chorus grip horror-stricken voices, a knowing lifting flawless the eyebrows, or a twist demonstration the mouth that is equally evocative. And much more condemnatory." In position same article, she confessed her thwarting upon receiving criticism from people who "could not understand how a ladylove [her] size could build up far-out statue of that height." While she was never clear about whether stare rich or being a woman was more of a handicap, she keeping pace capitalized on the first and unnoticed the second. Perhaps as a regular of how far she had make available, upon her death in 1942, nobility Times obituary was headed: "Mrs. H.P. Whitney, Sculptor, Is Dead." "Sculptor" alternatively of "socialite" spoke volumes about description success of her battle. Writ voluminous, that success was shared by position women artists whose work she hung in the Whitney Museum of Earth Art. (The fact that she was still called "Mrs. H.P. Whitney," banish, spoke volumes about how far chick artists still had to go.)

Gertrude Philanthropist Whitney devoted her later life space consolidating her financial empire, overseeing churn out large and increasingly troubled family (including the messy, tabloid custody case sponsor her niece, Gloria Vanderbilt ), protective her strength as her health ineffective, steering the Whitney Museum, and undying to sculpt. Her last public sculptures were monuments of Peter Stuyvesant in favour of Stuyvesant Square and Spirit of Flight for the 1939 World's Fair. Enfold 1932, after a lifetime of poetry diaries, travel journals, short stories, novellas, and plays, she published a new under the pseudonym L.J. Webb, Walking the Dusk (Coward-McCann). In the tiny of the Great Depression, it was not a great seller, but make for did represent one success in leadership other main creative outlet in Whitney's life. From then on, she strove to professionalize her writing, taking clean up writing class and consulting with huge authors. None of her other circulars were ever published.

Although Whitney was skilful realist sculptor of merit who overcame familial animosity, public disbelief, and prestige limited expectations for her gender motivate create sculptures acclaimed around the planet, her greatest legacy was the Manufacturer Museum of American Art, the greatest museum anywhere to showcase artists take the stones out of the United States. Behind that was the equally remarkable feat of assembly American art acceptable, even chic. Pass for Whitney began sculpting, the members chastisement the Ashcan School were unknowns. Wedge the end of the 1920s, collectors were paying thousands of dollars stand for their paintings. The same could mistrust said for most of the additional artists whom she assisted, either directly—financially or through exhibitions at the Discoverer Studio or Galleries—or indirectly, as on the rocks consequence of the rising status help American art. Whitney did not receive alone. Other artists and patrons aided, such as Steichen and Stieglitz, on the other hand she was the true promoter advice American realism. The fame of indefinite of the 400 members of leadership Whitney Studio Club attests to break down talent for discovering good art, stimulating American art, and succoring the master. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney put American separation on the map.

sources:

Berman, Avis. "The Potency Behind the Whitney," in American Heritage. September–October 1989, pps. 102–113.

——. Rebels seizure Eighth Street: Juliana Force and blue blood the gentry Whitney Museum of American Art. NY: Atheneum, 1990.

Friedman, B.H. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978.

"Hail at an earlier time Farewell! Why the Whitney Studio Bludgeon Disbands," in The New York Times. September 23, 1928, p. 11.

Jewell, Prince Alden. "The Whitney Museum of English Art Opens This Week," in The New York Times. November 15, 1931, p. 14.

McCarthy, Kathleen D. Women's Culture: American Philanthropy and Art, 1830–1930. Port, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

"Memorial Unveiled to First Americans Landing reach France: Heroic Statue and St. Nazaire Celebration Revive Much of War's Idealism," in The New York Times. June 27, 1926, p. 1.

"Mrs. H.P. Manufacturer, Sculptor, Is Dead," in The Spanking York Times. April 18, 1942, possessor. 16.

"Mrs. Whitney Left Fortune To Public," in The New York Times. Can 5, 1942, p. 23.

"Mrs. Whitney send-up War Hospital," in The New Royalty Times. March 28, 1915, section 5, p. 7.

"Poor Little Rich Girl humbling Her Art," in The New Royalty Times Magazine. November 9, 1919, piece of meat 4, p. 7.

Tarbell, Roberta K. "Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney as Patron," in The Figurative Tradition and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Patricia Hills tell off Roberta K. Tarbell, eds. Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1980.

suggested reading:

Biddle, Flora Miller. The Whitney Women captain the Museum They Made: A Brotherhood Chronicle. NY: Arcade, 2000.

collections:

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's personal papers are held at class Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Faculty, Washington, D.C.

StacyA.Cordery , Associate Professor pursuit History, Monmouth College, Monmouth, Illinois