Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was the great-granddaughter of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt who amassed a great fortune in railroads. Although active in New York society and charitable causes, Mrs. Whitney was known primarily as a sculptor and patron of the arts. Shortly after her marriage to Harry Payne Whitney, the financier, she began to devote herself to her art and studied sculpture with among others Auguste Rodin, whose influence was obvious in her later work. Her best known early work includes the “Aztec Fountain” (1912) for the Pan American Union Building and the Titanic Memorial (1914), both in Washington, D.C., and a number of memorial pieces inspired by her hospital work near the battlefields during World War I, including the “Washington Heights War Memorial”(1921) in New York City. Other important works by works by Mrs. Whitney include “The Spirit of the Red Cross” (1923) in Washington, D.C., the “Fountain of El Dorado” in San Francisco, the statue of Buffalo Bill Cody at the entrance to Yellowstone Park, the “Saint-Nazaire Monument in Saint-Nazaire France (1924) and the “Columbus Memorial” (1928-33) in Palos Spain and the bronze statue of Peter Stuyvesant in Stuyvesant Park New York (1941). She is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery.