sentences:  Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the museum's namesake and founder, was a well-regarded sculptor as well as a serious art collector.As a patron of the arts, she had already achieved some success with the Whitney Studio Club, a New York–based exhibition space she created in 1918 to promote the works of avant-garde and unrecognized American artists.Whitney favored the radical art of the American artists of the Ashcan School such as John French Sloan, George Luks and Everett Shinn, as well as others such as Edward Hopper, Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, and Max Weber.