Gertrude Dorgan Sold at Auction Prices

1893 Original watercolor of Chinatown street scene by young woman artist

Heading: (Chinatown, San Francisco - watercolor) Author: Dorgan, Gertrude Title: Chinatown street scene: Original watercolor Place Published: Publisher: Date Published: Description: 8 x 12", Signed "Dorgan 93". Includes Chinese ideographs which appear to be artistic inventions. Born in the Midwest to Irish immigrants during the Civil War, after moving with her family to San Francisco in the 1880s, Gertrude Dorgan began to study art and paint watercolors. This is one of her earliest known works, preceding her first appearance at an 1894 exhibition of the Sketch Club, a San Francisco organization of young women artists. The Club's luminaries included Josephine Hyde, Helen Hyde and children's book illustrator Albertine Wheelan, all noted for sketches of Chinatown women and children. The watercolors Dorgan entered in San Francisco exhibitions from 1894 to 1897 were conventional landscapes ("California Oaks", "Hull of a Wrecked Boat Lying on Beach"), but in this earlier watercolor she also tried her hand at the Chinatown subject, so popular among aspiring San Francisco artists of the Gilded Age. By the turn of the century, Dorgan had apparently abandoned art; she later became a stenographer for a San Francisco ice company.