Jaques helped found the Chicago Society of Etchers, an organization that would become internationally significant for promoting etching as a popular printmaking technique.

There, Jaques wrote poems for the Railway Conductors' Monthly until 1889 when they moved to Chicago for her husband to practice dentistry.

[6] The Society would attract international members and renown with Jaques herself as the driving force behind much of its success at popularizing etching in 20th-century America.

"[9] According to Jaques lines can evoke any emotion and it forms the basis of human creativity from primitive symbols to letters to pictures.

She also became a central figure in the wider community of etchers, and many artists would travel to her home, including many visits from Helen Hyde.

She became a mentor, collector, and promoter of several younger artists, including James Swann whom she entrusted giving the position of secretary in 1937.

Her images of botanically accurate plants and uncommon scenes of the alleys, docks, and markets of foreign cities demonstrate her significance among artists of the early 20th century.

Each state represents the artist's advancement in composition or technical prowess at a time when Jaques was among the first to rediscover such techniques.

Docks, coal barges, foreign markets, narrow alleys, and backyards are not common subjects for female artists to depict in such cities as Chicago, Cairo, Venice, and London.

The world's largest public collection of the work of Bertha Jaques is owned by the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.