Mrs. Gertrude Van Houten

Mrs. Gertrude Van Houten has so effectively developed her distinctive talent as an artist as to make it a medium through which she has established and built up a prosperous business as a high-class commercial artist and illustrator. In her independent business venture she has gained place as one of the leading exponents of this line of enterprise in the city of Grand Rapids, where she maintains her office in the Federal Square building and her home at 1322 Sigsbee street, southeast. She has made a record of splendid achievement and is popular in both business and social circles in her home city. Mrs. Gertrude (Brown) Van Houten was born at Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and in that state were likewise born her parents Andrew Jackson Brown and Martha (Brock) Brown. In the public schools of her native place Mrs. Van Houten continued her studies until she had profited by the curriculum of the high school, and at the age of sixteen years she entered upon a practical apprenticeship to learn commercial and illustrative art work. She gained exceptional proficiency, owing to her inherent talent, her appreciation of composition values in art production for commercial and illustrative purposes, and her close application to her profession. After having been engaged in such art work in Kansas City, Missouri, a few years, she came to Grand Rapids, in 1915, and her, prior to her marriage, she was for five years associated with the Grand Rapids Press, as illustrator. In 1920 she engaged independently in the work of her chosen profession, and she has continued her successful work as a commercial artist and illustrator, the while she has a large and appreciative clientage of representative order.