HOWARD GARDINER CUSHING (American, 1869-1916) "Portrait of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney". Oil on aritst board. Signed Howard G. Cushing lower right. Back of artist board is signed in pencil; "Bought by Mrs. Delano 131 E. 36" and "G. Whitney in costume by H. G. Cushing". In good original condition and framed under glass. Painting measures 18" x 13 1/4". Frame measures 19 ¾" x 15". Depicts the famous New York art patron and museum founder in a fanciful Leon Bakst-designed costume. Most likely this portrait of Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney inspired the mural decorations Howard Cushing painted on the walls of Gertrude Whitney’s studio. The studio, designed by William Adams Delano (1864-1960) of the architecture firm Delano & Aldrich, still survives with the Howard Cushing murals intact.

A drawing by John Singer Sargent depicts Gertrude in the Leon Bakst costume and several photographers photographed her in the costume as well.

Howard Cushing died in 1916 and Gertrude Whitney helped fund a memorial gallery designed by Adams Delano in Newport, R.I. The Cushing Memorial Gallery built in 1920 is part of the Newport Art Museum.

Gertrude Whitney’s still-intact Beaux-Arts style studio, built in 1913 on the Whitney family estate in Old Westbury, Long Island was designed by William Adams Delano, a friend of the family. Mrs. Whitney commissioned her life-long friend Howard Cushing to paint the murals in the curved stair-well. Cushing devised imaginative tropical flora and fauna at the lower level culminating in a portrait of Mrs. Whitney, dressed in her Bakst costume, greeting guest from her position on the wall opposite the top of the stairs. *From: The Figurative Tradition and the Whitney Museum of American Art. By Patricia Hills and Roberta Tarbell.