Printmaker Gertrude Stone Brooks was born Gertrude Clara Stone on May 25, 1900, in Tacoma, Washington. Her family relocated to San Francisco, California in 1905. She studied at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) and the California College of Arts and Crafts (now the California College of the Arts) with Armin Hansen. In 1926 she married lawyer William F. Billings, who appears to have later changed his professional name to Richard Brooks. In 1928 they had a daughter and by 1940 they had two sons and had moved to Fairfax, California. 

From 1939 to 1942 Brooks traveled from Sonoma to San Diego documenting the California Spanish missions in sketches, which she later turned into a series of etchings. She exhibited at the Santa Cruz Statewide Exhibit in 1936, and in August of 2023 her work was shown at the Depot Park Museum in Sonoma in the exhibit "Art and Architecture of the California Missions". 

Gertrude Stone Brooks died in San Francisco on May 3, 1978. Her work is held at Stanford University Library and UC Berkeley Bancroft Library.