Collection Spotlight: Gertrude Fiske

Gertrude Horsford Fiske (1879–1961), an American Impressionist painter, was a leading female artist of the Boston School painters, active during the early twentieth century. A native Bostonian, she enrolled at the age of 25 in the School of Drawing and Painting of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston with Edmund Tarbell, Frank Benson, and Philip Hale. Supplementing her education with summers spent under the tutelage of Charles H. Woodbury in Ogunquit, Maine, Fiske became a successful and well-respected artist.

In 1914, she became a founding member of the Guild of Boston Artists, and later she was the first woman appointed to the Massachusetts State Art Commission in 1929. The winner of multiple awards throughout her career and participating in numerous exhibitions in her lifetime, her work is now in the collections of prestigious American museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Institute; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art; Baltimore Museum of Fine Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and now in the collection of the Two Red Roses Foundation.

This newly acquired work by Fiske features an attraction at the world-famous Wonderland amusement park at Revere Beach, Massachusetts. The Revere Beach destination was a choice for summer fun with many food vendors, ballrooms, rides, and attractions, including this Gulliver’s Travels attraction at the base of a roller coaster. Fiske’s brilliant and vigorous colors in this works reflect the style she learned from her summers in Maine with Charles H. Woodbury.