Gertrude Fiske

Gertrude H. Fiske was a native New Englander born in Boston April 16, 1878, the oldest of six children. She trained at the Museum School (Boston) with Edmund C. Tarbell, Philip L. Hale and Frank W. Benson (1904-1912) and with Charles H. Woodbury (summers) in Ogunquit, Maine. She was a founding member of the Guild of Boston Artists, a founder of the Concord Art Association and participated in the founding of the Ogunquit Art Association. She was an Associate of the National Academy of Design and a member of the National Association of Women Painters & Sculptors; Guild of Boston Artists; Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts; Concord AA; New Haven Paint & Clay Club; American Federation of Arts; Oqunquit AA; Grand Central Art Galleries of NYC; Chicago Society of Etchers; Boston Society of Etchers; National Arts Club; Cosmopolitan Club and she was the first woman to appointed to the State Art Commission of Massachusetts (1929-1930).

Fiske won silver and gold medals at the Panama-Pacific Exposition (1915); Conn. Academy of F.A. (1918; 1925); Wilmington Society of F.A (1921); National Academy of Design (1922; 1925; 1928, 1931, 1935); National Assoc. of Women Painters & Sculptors (1925, 1929); New Haven Paint & Clay Club (1925, 1929); Springfield Art League (1929, 1931); Ogunquit Art Center (1932) and more.

Fiske maintained Boston, Weston and Ogunquit art studios and was close friends with fellow artists Jane Peterson and Anne Carleton. She was given solo exhibitions at the GBA (1916); R.I. School of Design and the Cleveland Art Museum (1917); Wellesley College, GBA, Farnsworth Museum (1920); GBA (1924, 1927, 1933).

Fiske’s work is represented in the Art Institute of Chicago; Corcoran Gallery of Art; Carnegie Institute; Penn. Academy of F.A.; Nassau County Museum of F.A.; Baltimore Museum of F.A.; Detroit Institute of Arts; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, TX and more.

She died on April 18, 1961. The Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine gave her a retrospective exhibition in 1966 and later New York’s Schoelkopf Galleries and Vose Galleries of Boston gave exhibitions in 1967; Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC (1975), Robert Schoelkopf Gallereis (1981). She is a major member of the Boston school and her beach scenes are sought after worldwide.