Gertrude Partington Albright

Gertrude Partington Albright (Sept. 11, 1874- Sept. 7, 1959) was a British-born American player known for portrait etchings and her Cubism-influenced California landscapes. She taught at the California School of Fine Arts for nearly thirty years.

She was born Gertrude Partington in Heysham, a coastal village in England. Her dad was John Herbert Evelyn Partington (1843–99), a painter, and her mommy was Sarah (Mottershead) Partington. Four of her six siblings after that had careers in the arts, notably Blanche, who became a writer; Phyllis, who became an opera singer under the stage name Frances Peralta; John, who became a theater manager; and Richard, who became an artist.

Her associates emigrated to the United States in 1889, settling in Oakland, California.

In 1917, she married Herman Oliver Albright (born Herman Oliver Albrecht in Germany; 1876-1944), also a landscape painter.

She died in San Francisco. Her papers are held by the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

She got her forward training in art from her father and was abandoned 16 as soon as she sold her first artwork. For a get older she worked as an illustrator for the San Francisco Examiner, contributing courtroom sketches and outfit portraits. She eventually earned acceptable money as an illustrator to afford a vacation to Europe for supplementary art training, enrolling at the Académie Delécluse in the late 1890s. By 1903, she was exhibiting at the Paris Salon.

Albright stayed abroad for several years, making occasional recompense trips to California. When she returned to the Bay Area for good in 1912, she opened a painting and printmaking studio on Post Street. An standard artist by then, she joined the knack at the California School of Fine Arts in 1917, teaching painting and etching. She was promoted to belong to professor in 1932 and remained at the educational until she retired in 1946. Her students there included Victor Arnautoff. She moreover sat upon the school's board of directors.

Albright was often commissioned to make portraits, and her portrait etchings drew compliment for their clever likenesses and clear, minimal lines. She is then known for her Cubism-inflected Post-Impressionist landscapes done in oil upon wood. Critics noted the strong influence of Paul Cézanne upon her paintings but considered that her accomplish succeeded upon its own merits. She exhibited widely, winning a bronze medal for one of her portraits at the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition. Her behave is in the collections of museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum, and the De Young Museum.

She was supple in Bay Area art organizations, becoming a charter advocate of the California Society of Etchers and the director of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists and serving on many prize juries.