BIOGRAPHY:

Bertha Elizabeth Stringer Lee was born in San Francisco, CA on December 6, 1869. She was the socialite-daughter of a wealthy storage company owner who encouraged her pursuit of art. She studied in the studio of William Keith in 1885, the Mark Hopkins Art Institute under Arthur Mathews, and briefly in New York and Paris. By age fourteen she was exhibiting in her native city.

In 1894 she married Eugene Lee and maintained a studio in her home at 2744 Steiner Street where she gave teas and made gifts of her paintings to friends. Mrs. Lee was a prolific painter of coastals, landscapes, and scenes of the Monterey Peninsula and the San Francisco Bay area of which many were lost in the 1906 earthquake. A lifelong resident of San Francisco, she died on March 19, 1937.

Member: San Francisco Art Ass'n; California Art Club; Arts & Crafts Club; San Francisco Sketch Club.

Exhibited: Mechanics' Institute Fair (San Francisco), 1887; World's Columbian Expo (Chicago), 1893 (prize); Mark Hopkins Institute, 1897, 1906; Starr King Fraternity, 1905; Del Monte Art Gallery, 1907-12; Alaska-Yukon Expo (Seattle), 1909 (prize); San Francisco Art Ass'n annuals; Sketch Club; Sorosis Club, 1913; Sequoia Club (San Francisco), 1914; California State Fairs (prizes); Richelieu Gallery (San Francisco), 1922 (solo).

Works held: St Mary's College (Moraga); Oakland Museum; De Young Museum.

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