Gertrude: The Life and Times of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney

A fascinating biography of the sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the founder of the Whitney Museum of Art, a rebellious woman who remade the art world in her image.

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942) spent her life rebelling against the circumscribed roles society dictated for her. Tall and stylish, with modish cropped brown curls and a distinguished face, and arresting in lifestyle and demeanor—whether dressed in the latest fashions from Paris or her studio smock—Whitney understood from an early age the significance of power and stature. She ached to overcome the strictures of her sex and the regimented life imposed by her ultra-wealthy family and the societal conventions of the Gilded Age.

Whitney is perhaps best known today as the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art, though her achievements as a sculptor are striking. She championed American art during an era in which Europe was considered the aesthetic mother lode; she had her portrait painted in pants against her husband’s wishes, and when he refused to have it in their home, she hung it in her studio; she traveled alone across Spain; she founded her own museum when the Metropolitan Museum of Art would not display the work she offered.

Gertrude is an engrossing biography with the pacing and intrigue of a novel. In it, Fiona Donovan offers a portrait of an artist and a patron, a fascinating, wholly original woman whose artistic work, generosity, and championing of the talents of other artists reshaped the arts in America for years to come.