User:Jamie Craig mc henry/sandbox

Later life, death and legacy
Hartland was proposed to by a man named Arthur Bell Groves, her father, Richard Hartland's assistant. He was a young man who had long been in love with her, despite being below her social status. She initially refused him, and her father objected to the union at least partly because of his poor financial status. Yet, over time, she accepted a second proposal from him. The couple eventually moved to Mallow in their home county of Cork, shortly after they married, and the two stayed together until Arthur’s death in 1932.

Hartland gained notoriety later in life, and critics began to take note of her work. Male critics sometimes referred to her paintings and illustrations as having "feminine charm." This was partly due to the beauty and lightness of her work, but was likely also because she was a prominent female painter in a time when this was uncommon. The word "effleurer" which means to touch lightly or brush against, was frequently used by critics to describe her technique of sparse brushstrokes. As other prominent flower painters and illustrators did, Hartland painted outdoors in order to seek out truths through observation. In her later art, her brushstrokes changed from short, quick ones to lengthy, rough ones, and she frequently left the edges of her paintings unpainted.

During her time at Mallow she painted multiple pictures of the town’s surrounding countryside. Gertrude died in 1954 of natural causes and was buried alongside her husband, sharing the same graveyard as some of her close relatives. Hartland has two children, Aidan and Cillean. She became pregnant a third time, but this unfortunately ended in a miscarriage. Aidan would grow up and enter in to the finical world but died relatively young due to illness believed to be tuberculosis. Cillean, who pursued his mother's artistic endeavors with limited success, eventually led to financial difficulties.