Landscape artist Albert York of Water Mill died on November 3 of cancer. A highly regarded yet lesser known painter whose work was held primarily in museums and private collections, including that of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, he was 80.
Born in Detroit in 1928, he grew up in boarding schools and foster homes while his father worked in the automobile industry as an electroplater. Although he he had been told his mother was dead, he was reunited with her many years later, in the early 1970s. In his teens, he went to live with an aunt and uncle in Belleville, Ontario, and later studied at the Ontario College of Art. He also attended the Society of Arts and Crafts in Detroit and served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War before moving to New York in 1952.
Mr. York studied briefly under Raphael Soyer, but became overwhelmed with trying to find work and was forced to put painting aside. In 1959 he met Virginia Mann Caldwell and, following a four-month stay with her and her two children in France, he returned to painting and the two married 1960. The family settled in the early 1960s in Southampton, where he worked as a house painter and carpenter to subsidize his work as an artist.
Highly critical of his own work, Mr. York reluctantly showed some of his paintings in 1962 to his employer, Robert Kulicke, a still life painter and frame maker. Mr. Kulicke recommended Mr. York to friend and business partner Roy Davis, owner of the Davis Galleries and Mr. York had his first exhibition there in 1963. He had a total of 16 exhibitions at the gallery, now known as Davis & Langdale, his last being held in 2007. Mr. York painted roughly 250 works in his lifetime.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by a stepson, Jonathan Caldwell of New Mexico; a stepdaughter, Kristin Caldwell of Pennsylvania; and four step-grandchildren.
on Nov 4, 2009