Emily Hall Tremaine

Emily Hall Tremaine (1908–1987) was a prominent art director and collector.[1] She published Apéritif, a society magazine.[2][3]

Early life

Tremaine was born in Butte, Montana, in 1908.[4]

The Tremaine Collection

Hall Tremaine's interest in art began in the 1920s and '30s while she lived in Santa Barbara, California, as she developed friendships with art collectors and curators who were instrumental in shaping her views on modern art. They included Walter and Louise Arensberg, Mildred Barnes, Robert Woods Bliss, Dr. Grace Louise McCann Morley and Arthur Everett Austin Jr.[5]

The Tremaine collection, which began with her purchase of Mondrian's Broadway Boogie-Woogie in 1944 shortly after it left the artist's studio comprises more than 400 works by European and American artists, ranging from Braque, Picasso and Klee to such contemporary Americans as Michael Heizer, Neil Jenney and Robert Irwin. A major exhibition of some 150 objects appeared in 1984 at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford.

The Tremaines began dispersing their collection in 1980. The 1958 painting Three Flags by Johns was purchased by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1981 for the record price at the time of $1 million. In November 1988 and November 1991 Christie's New York held auctions of the couple's works, funds of which were used to establish the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation.[5]

The papers of Tremaine are on display at the Smithsonian Museum, donated in 2005 by Hall Tremaine's step-grandson, Burton G. Tremaine III, and date from c. 1890 to 2004. They document the development of Tremaine's collection of modernist, pop and contemporary art. The papers comprise biographical material, including a sound recording, personal correspondence, art collection files, artist files, exhibition loan files.[6]

Personal life

In the mid-1940s she moved to New York and met and married Burton Tremaine.[5] Hall Tremaine died on December 17, 1987, at her home in Madison.[7]

References

Citations

1. Glueck, Grace (17 December 1987). "Emily Hall Tremaine, Designer and Collector, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 November 2021.
2. "Kaminski Auctions of Beverly Hills presents the Emily Hall Tremaine Collection in their Thanksgiving Sale November 28th & 29th, 2015". Kaminski Auctions (Press release). Beverly Hills, California. November 4, 2015. Retrieved 27 April 2022 – via PRWeb.
3. Welter 2019, p. 42.
4. Housley 2001, p. 7.
5. Jozefacka, Anna (January 2015). "Tremaine, Emily and Burton G., Sr". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Index of Historic Collectors and Dealers of Cubism. Retrieved 15 June 2022.
6. Ng, Judy; Ashley, Stephanie (January 25, 2019). "Emily Hall Tremaine papers, circa 1890–2004 – Digitized Collection" (PDF). Archives of American Art (finding aid). Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 15 June 2022.
7. Housley 2001, pp. 211–212.

Sources

• Housley, Kathleen L. (2001). Emily Hall Tremaine: collector on the cusp. Meriden, CT: Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation. ISBN 978-0-9705011-0-3. Retrieved 25 November 2021.
• Welter, Volker M. (19 November 2019). Tremaine Houses: One Family's Patronage of Domestic Architecture in Midcentury America. Getty Publications. ISBN 978-1-60606-614-0. Retrieved 27 April 2022.