1874-1959
Theme/Style – Impressionism, Modernism, landscapes, figurative art, illustrations, sculpture
Media – Oils, illustrations, etchings
Artistic Focus – Beginning at the turn of the Twentieth Century as an illustrator and Impressionist painter, Gertrude Albright’s artistic career broadened after studies in Europe. She adopted a more Modernist aesthetic. Her palette included more engaging colors and she moved from soft contours to the occasional use of more linear forms in the mid-1920s.
Career Highlights –
- Born in Heysham, England, in 1874, Gertrude Partington immigrated to the U.S. with her family at age six, and settled in Oakland.
- One of seven children who all became active in some field of the arts, Gertrude’s first art teacher was her father, J.H.E. Partington, who himself was a well-known portraitist in the San Francisco Bay Area.
- By the turn of the century Gertrude was an illustrator for the San Francisco Examiner, a position that helped finance her trips abroad where she studied at the Académie Delecluse in Paris with G.X. Prinet and learned the technique of drypoint etching.
- On her return to San Francisco, Gertrude established a studio on Post Street, where she produced etchings, portraits, and scenes of the San Francisco Bay Area, and exhibited often with the San Francisco Art Association.
- In 1913 she co-founded the California Society of Etchers; she also received a bronze medal at San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915.
- In 1917 Gertrude married one of her art students, Herman Albright, and joined the staff of the California School of Fine Arts, where she remained as a respected instructor for nearly 30 years.
- A director of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists, Gertrude Partington Albright continued her active involvement in the Bay Area art community until her demise in 1959.
Bibliographic references are available upon request.