Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens 2019 Annual Report

The Art of
Gertrude Seiberling
In 2019, Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens
celebrated the artistic career of Gertrude
Seiberling with an exhibition of 30 of her
works of art in the Manor House, and a
companion catalog available for sale in
Molly’s Shop. In the gardens, a display of
sculpture by local artists was inspired by
Gertrude’s paintings.
Gertrude Seiberling was a national figure
in music appreciation and education, and
a founding member of the Tuesday Musical
Club in Akron and the St. Cecilia Society.
She served as president of the National
Federation of Music Clubs from 1919 to
1921, and was heavily involved as a board
member for almost a decade afterwards.
At the age of 64, after decades of service
to her family and community, Gertrude
Seiberling quietly returned to her childhood love of painting. While it had been more than forty
years since she had picked up a paintbrush, Gertrude had never stopped thinking like an artist.
In an interview with the Akron Times-Press in February 1931, she said, “I was constantly seeing
pictures around me. This contrast, that arrangement of trees, the colors of a flower garden,
always presented themselves to me in terms of pictures and in my mind I would work out a
composition.”
Gertrude devoted herself to painting from this point forward. She regularly took art classes and
was a founding member of the Women’s Art League in Akron. She was also a board member of
the Akron Art Institute from 1935 to 1937. Her work was exhibited at Northeast Ohio museums,
and she also garnered two solo exhibitions at the Akron Art Institute in 1938 and 1946 as well
three solo exhibitions with the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors in New York
City. Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens documented over 140 paintings by Gertrude Seiberling, most of
which are in the museum’s collection.
2 • Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens