Ann (Curtiss) Scoville

SALISBURY — Ann (Curtiss) Scoville, figurative painter and sculptor, died July 17, 2014, at her family home in Salisbury at age 95. For 48 years, she was married to Herbert “Pete” Scoville Jr., scientist and arms control advocate. They raised their four children in the Washington, D.C., area. After his death in 1985, she returned to northwest Connecticut, where she continued to work in welded steel as a sculptor.Born in 1919 in Winchester, Conn., Ann Curtiss was the daughter of Philip Everett Curtiss and Maudie (Valli) Curtiss (formerly actress Ida Valli). She and her older sister, Joan, grew up in a household that regularly featured interesting personalities dropping by, especially in the summers, when the seemingly sleepy town of Norfolk was reinvigorated by such notable figures as her father’s friend and colleague, Sinclair Lewis. Her father, a writer of popular fiction and a justice of the peace, was closely in touch with local events, and her mother, coming from a dramatic background in England, attracted a lively, stimulating crowd. The house was occupied continuously by the Curtiss family since it was built in the late 18th century by her ancestor Solomon Curtiss, who served in the Revolutionary War. It was at a crossroads, both literally and figuratively. Few could or wanted to pass by without stopping at the Curtiss home.At age12, Ann began to paint. By the time she was 14, she was studying with the painter Guy Pène du Bois. From the start, her eye was drawn to the human figure and forms in relation to each other. At a lecture given in recent years at the Norfolk Country Club, she recounted being escorted as an art student to a field and being told to do a study of the landscape. When the exercise was over, the teacher commented, “Well, everyone fulfilled their assignments, with the exception of that inveterate portrait painter, Ann Curtiss, who ignored the landscape and chose to focus her sole attention on one figure off in the distance.”Her skill and dedication brought her to the attention of parents eager to have Ann Curtiss paint their child. In recent years when her family was eager to track down some of those early works, they discovered that those grown children continued to place her portraits front and center in their houses. Her group portrait of her own four children still attracts the attention of those visiting her house.At 17, she married Pete Scoville of New York City, whose father’s family were longtime residents of Salisbury. Her husband’s graduate studies took them to Cambridge, England and then, during World War II, to Rochester, N.Y., where Ann learned to fly and became a flight instructor for pilots entering the Army Air Force. Only her desire to spend more time with a growing family forced her to give up flying and working with soldiers going off to war.From the 1940s to the 1980s, Pete Scoville’s work as a science advisor to the government in various critical national security agencies, including the Department of Defense, CIA and Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, dictated a life in Washington, where they continued to raise their four children and Ann continued to paint, with increasing attention to abstract expression.By the 1970s, there was one remaining frontier for Ann Scoville as an artist: taking her interest in form to the third dimension. For this, she enrolled in a garage mechanics course at a local high school to learn welding. The years that followed — as a sculptor of welded steel figures — were the most prolific of her life. A fascination with the Moscow Circus and later with ballet led to towering figures that originated in her garage studio and found their way into private collections, museums, gallery shows and public spaces, from the American Embassy in Moscow to the walls of the Warner Theatre opposite the Nutmeg Ballet Conservatory in Torrington.Ann was represented by ART 101 in Brooklyn. Director Ellen Rand describes her work as “energy and grace incarnate. The figures leap off the page; the sculptures inhabit entire rooms; even the outdoors seems to yield.” The intensity with which Ann worked meant long hours in her studio. By 9 at night, Pete Scoville might tap his cane on the floor of his home office above her garage studio and ask, “Ready for dinner, Annie?”This sustained focus was interrupted only by a genuine desire that her children and the people she took an interest in also pursue their interests to the fullest. Her generosity was focused on helping individuals — in some cases, friends seeking the right bureaucrat to facilitate getting a green card and citizenship; or young people needing encouragement from an artist they respected.Concert pianist Shaun Tirrell remembers, “She made sure I made it to a competition at the Kennedy Center by insisting on walking across town with me in 60 mph winds during a raging snowstorm.”Ann had other passions as well. As a visual artist recording history, when Winston Churchill died, she flew to London and returned with a series of gouaches that conveyed the solemnity of his funeral and the magnitude of his effect on mourners. Her interest from an early age in all things Russian led her to study the Russian language during her 70s and embark on a solo trip to St. Petersburg in the middle of the winter, prompting many Russians visiting northwest Connecticut to seek her out as one of their own. Many also saw her as an artist who loved science. Ann’s favorite reading was the works of high-energy physicists, whose books she annotated heavily. Biographies of Feynman and Einstein were by her side to her final days.Ann (Curtiss) Scoville will be remembered by her family and friends as someone who, through her energy and perception, imbued her life and work with a sense of dramatic flair, a keen observation of the detail of movement, an appreciation of music and a determination with her heart and soul that each individual discover his or her true potential.She is survived by her children, Anthony Scoville of Salisbury, Thomas Scoville and Molly Fitzmaurice of Washington and Nicholas Scoville of Los Angeles, Calif., and their spouses; eight grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. A memorial service is planned for Sept. 6 at 4 p.m. at the family home. In lieu of flowers, the family encourages contributions to her beloved Nutmeg Ballet Conservatory in Torrington.