Gertrude Putnam McManus was born on December 28, 1889, in New York to Gertrude Putnam and William McManus. She was married to Horace Stanley Chase (1883-1955) from 1913-1919 and had two children, Marion and Horace Gair Chase II, named after his paternal grandfather. She was a film critic and reviewer for the New York Tribune in the early 1920s and worked on silent films, most significantly as a contributing writer to the 1924 The Enchanted Forest. She wrote intertitles for other films. Chase married artist Everett Shinn in 1924 and moved to Westport, Connecticut. She acted in plays locally, but declined to perform on Broadway, as Shinn disapproved. In 1932 Gertrude sued Everett for divorce on grounds of cruelty, and she resumed using Chase as her family name. She retained their home in Westport and a number of Shinn's paintings. She died on August 7, 1954.

Sources:

Divorce documents, Box 1, Folder 21, Gertrude Chase family collection of Edward Shinn, John J. Burns Library, Boston College.

Marriage certificate, Shared box 2532, Folder 4, Gertrude Chase family collection of Edward Shinn, John J. Burns Library, Boston College.

"Mrs. Shinn Gets Divorce.; Wife of Westport (Conn.) Artist Charged Cruelty in Suit." New York Times, December 17, 1932.

New York City Department of Records & Information Services; New York City, New York; New York City Birth Certificates; Borough: Manhattan; Year: 1889.

"Parents Oppose Wedding Daughter to Artist Shinn", The Bridgeport Herald, April 23, 1933.

State population census schedules, 1915. New York State Archives, Albany, New York.

Everett Shinn was born on November 6, 1876, in Woodstown, New Jersey to Josephine Ransley and Isaiah Conklin Shinn. He studied mechanical drawing at the Spring Garden Institute in Philadelphia, but he found the repetitive work tedious and was fired from his first job. He enrolled at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and started a career as a newspaper illustrator in Philadelphia, where he became friends with other local artists working in realism.

He married fellow illustrator and author Florence Scovel in 1898, and relocated to New York City, following several of his artist friends. He continued working for newspapers until 1900, when he shifted his focus to magazine illustration. Though this provided his income, he also exhibited portraits and urban scenes in pastel in New York City galleries. He also began to paint ornamental screens and murals for private homes and theaters. In 1908 the Macbeth Galleries held a successful exhibit of Shinn and seven of his artist friends who painted street scenes and working-class life, afterwards dubbed “The Eight”, the founders of what became known as the Ashcan School.

Shinn and Scovel divorced in 1912, and he married Corrine Baldwin in 1913. The couple had two children, Janet and David, and built a home in the Catskill Mountains. Shinn exhibited his art less frequently, and from 1917 to 1923, he worked as an art director for Goldwyn Pictures, Inspiration Pictures, and Cosmopolitan Pictures in New York City. By 1921, Shinn was once again divorced, and he began dating Gertrude Putnam Chase, who he wed in 1924. They settled in Westport, Connecticut, and Shinn’s commissions for decor for private homes provided the bulk of their income, although his earlier paintings continued to be exhibited in New York City. Shinn was a Quaker and teetotaler, and he objected to the gatherings Chase hosted at their home. She, in turn, began to resent his requests that she model for his nudes, as well as his rudeness to their guests. She divorced Shinn in 1932, on grounds of cruelty. He remarried yet again in 1933, to Paula Downing. In the 1930s Shinn suffered financial difficulties, due to the Great Depression eroding his sales and commissions. However, the Whitney Museum showed ten of his paintings in an exhibition of New York realists in 1937, and in 1939, he was awarded the Watson F. Blair Prize for watercolors by the Art Institute of Chicago. He divorced for the last time in 1942. In 1951 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and he died of lung cancer in 1953.

Sources:

De Kaye, Ormonde. "Shinn." American Heritage. Volume 37, Issue 1, December 1985.

Vicary, Elizabeth Zoe. "Shinn, Everett (1876-1953), painter and illustrator." American National Biography. 1 Feb. 2000; Accessed 11 Aug. 2026. https://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-1700796 .