She Loved the water... her father, Lt. Commander Henry Livermore Abbott, was a sailor, a decorated submarine captain in the First World War and a Naval advisor to the FDR administration during WWII.
As an introduction, I've written a little remembrance
The Last Time I Saw Mary…
In May of 2019 I traveled to the Long Island enclave of Southampton for my annual visit with Mary Abbott. I’d been making this pilgrimage for about 15 years, where I would visit with Mary in her tidy ranch house at 125 Corrigan Street. We would catch up on life, go to lunch, sit in her garden, have some wine and spend time mucking about in her studio. There, I would pick out paintings to send back to Chicago and unearth works on paper from her disarrayed flat file drawers. These were generally unsigned and I would sit her down, put a pencil in her hand and make her sign away. Mary didn’t have a commercial bone in her body and did not enjoy signing her work. She had horrible handwriting, was dyslexic and had a hard time fitting her name in the space provided. Very often works received her scribble only on the day they left her studio. Often I would be soundly reprimanded for forcing her to do this small but heinous task: "Oh, just leave me alone!"
I Am a Sailor’s Daughter
watercolor on paper
9 x 12 inches
signed at lower right; signed and titled on frame backing board, estate stamped verso
#11580
Mary loved to paint watery watercolors of the ocean, sky, and clouds, often from a perch on the beach at Southampton.
On this visit I arrived to find Mary still in bed, which was not particularly unusual as she liked to lounge around but I was told she had been spending much more time there. Wanda, her housekeeper, was puttering about the kitchen and her Girl Friday, Mary Stubelek, arrived soon after. She began filling me in on Mary Abbott’s slowly declining health — she was 98 and had heart problems. But, she was perky and chatty, though there would be no lunch date on this visit. So I sat with her in the bedroom looking out the window at her lovely garden, listening to the birds scold an errant squirrel.
After a while Mary S, and I wandered away to talk privately about the fact that Mary A. was not going to live forever and we should put some thought into what comes next. We knew Mary had a will, prepared years before, but as far as we knew it had never really been completed or possibly even signed. She had no children and, really, no heirs. In 2007 Abbott had asked me to look into setting up some sort of trust or foundation that, after her death, could use the proceeds from her estate to support emerging women artists. It was a wonderful idea and I contacted Artadia, the non-profit grant-maker in New York, about partnering in such an endeavor. They were very interested and we organized a couple of meetings with attorneys and stakeholders in nearby Jamesport.
Mary was happy and excited about this and just as things began to gel I received a phone call from the lawyer in New York City who, years before, had written her original will. This fellow, who I’m not naming, came on like a rabid dog saying if I knew what was good for me I’d mind my own damn business and leave Mary Abbott’s affairs alone! Full stop!
Well… he scared the hell out of me, so we stopped. This was both disappointing and embarrassing, as I had to contact everyone and apologize for wasting their time. Worst of all, her will remained unresolved, as far as we knew, and we assumed that when she would eventually pass things would be a mess.
This visit lasted a few more days. Mary Stubelek and I worked on organizing her studio, sorting through piles of blank paper and unfinished drawings… investigating long ignored rolls of canvas, and generally trying to bring some order to her 98 years of life. We poked around an off-site storage unit but it was just too much to tackle. A few days later I said my goodbyes and left Corrigan Street, fairly certain I wouldn’t see Mary Abbott again. She died two months later on August 23, 2019.
Sure enough, what followed was a mess. Another attorney, and old friend of Mary’s, acted as her executor and I did not envy him the chore. He allowed me, working with Mary Stubelek, to continue representing the estate while he began sorting things out. I was well treated and appreciated the opportunity to keep working with Mary’s wonderful legacy. Eventually, in August of 2020, we were instructed to return everything we had on consignment in Chicago — I think there were about 70 canvases or so and many works on paper.
And suddenly, after 19 years, that was that.
Since then good things have continued to happen for Mary Lee Abbott. In 2021 we published a 120 page Abbott biography drawing on stories and photos from my nineteen year friendship and interviews with her many friends and colleagues. Her estate found a home with the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, where Mary taught for a decade in the 1970s. Last year Schoelkopf Gallery presented a major Abbott exhibition in New York, To Draw Imagination, and interest in her work has continued to grow.
Over the past 25 years we have placed well over 400 Mary Abbott paintings, watercolors and drawings. We have a wide selection of small, watery watercolors such as these 4 x 6 inch works. All are signed or initialed and estate stamped.
To view more images of the exhibition
