Pat de Groot | |
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Born | Patricia Richardson June 14, 1930 St John’s Wood, London, England |
Died | July 26, 2018 Brewster, Massachusetts, U.S. | (aged 88)
Other names | Patricia de Groot |
Education | University of Pennsylvania |
Occupation(s) | Painter, illustrator, book designer |
Years active | 1974–2018 (for painting) |
Spouse | Nanno de Groot (m. 1958–1963; his death) |
Pat de Groot (née Patricia Richardson; 1930–2018) was an English-born American painter and illustrator.[1][2] She lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts for many years, and was noted for her oil paintings and drawings of seascapes and birds.[3][4][5]
Pat de Groot was born as Patricia Richards on June 14, 1930, in St John’s Wood, London, England, to parents Evelyn "Evie" Straus Weil and Ernald W. A. Richardson.[1][6][7][8] She was the great granddaughter of Isidor Straus.[7] Her mother Evelyn Weil worked as an interior designer, with clients such as Truman Capote.[8][9] Her father Ernald W. A. Richardson came from high social class, and served in the Queen's Regiment.[6][10] Her parents divorced when she was a child, and in 1940 she moved to New York City, New York, United States.[1][6] In 1947, her mother Eve Weil married George Backer, the publisher of the New York Post.[1]
Richardson received a B.A. degree in 1953 in literature from the University of Pennsylvania.[6]
After graduation from college, she worked with George Plimpton at The Paris Review in Paris; then moved to New York City to design book covers for the publishing company Farrar, Straus and Giroux.[6] She had also apprenticed under the book designer Marshall Lee at the H. Wolff Book Manufacturing Company in New York City.
In 1946, Richards started making visits to Provincetown, Massachusetts.[6] She met her future husband, painter Nanno de Groot in Provincetown in 1956, and they wed in 1958.[6][10] Together they built a house in Provincetown on the Harriet Adams’ land on Commercial Street, it was completed in 1962.[6][11] Months later in 1963, her husband Nanno de Groot died of lung cancer.[12]
Her parties in Provincetown in the 1960s and 1970s attracted celebrities, musicians, and artists.[1] Her long-term lover was jazz drummer Elvin Jones.[1] De Groot also would rent out a room in her house in the summer to visiting creative people, such as John Waters, Philip Hoare, and painter Richard Baker.[6][13]
De Groot never had formal training in fine art, and started to seriously purse the field in 1974, at the age of 44.[14][15] In 2000, she had her first solo exhibition in New York City of small seascape oil paintings at the Pat Hearn Gallery.[14][16] In 2002, she was awarded the Anonymous Was A Woman Award;[17] and in 2007 she was awarded the Lee Krasner Award from Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She had a survey exhibition at the Provincetown Art Association in 2009.[18]
She died of a stroke on July 26, 2018, in Brewster, Massachusetts, U.S..[1][6] De Groot has an artist file at the Smithsonian American Art and Portrait Gallery Library.
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