The Collection: Emily Hall Tremaine and Burton G. Tremaine Sr.

The Collection04.14.2025

The art collector Emily Hall Tremaine began building her collection in the 1930s. Initially, she was guided by Chick Austin, the director of Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum, who introduced her to other modern art collectors. Her first major purchase was Georges Braque’s mysterious still life “The Black Rose” (1927), which she bought for $3,250.

In the mid-1940s Emily moved to New York where she met and married Burton, the head of a lighting manufacturing firm, who was also an art collector. Together, the Tremaines would accumulate over 700 works with an emphasis on work done by artists in their lifetime. The couple’s first joint acquisition was Piet Mondrian’s geometric “Victory Boogie-Woogie,” which they purchased from the dealer Valentine Dudensing for $8,000 in 1944. In 1998, Larry Gagosian brokered the painting’s $11 million sale to S.I. Newhouse, who later sold it to the Dutch government for $40 million.

In 1953, the French artist Robert Delauney’s widow, Sonia, approached the Tremaines with an offer to buy the circular abstraction “Premier Disque.” She felt that "Robert started it and Mondrian took it as far as it would go with the ‘Victory’....... Always keep the two together.” As often as possible, the Tremaines kept that promise.

Another important purchase for the Tremaines came in 1959, when they acquired Jasper Johns’ three-dimensional “Three Flags” for $900; Emily considered it to be “a great new invention.” In 1980, the couple privately sold the painting to the Whitney Museum for $1 million, at that time the highest price paid for the work of a living American artist.

Image: Robert Delaunay’s “Premier Disque” (1912-13) and Piet Mondrian’s “Victory Boogie-Woogie” (1944) in the Tremaine’s apartment circa 1984, alongside a 20th century African wood mask from Burkina Faso, Brice Marden's “Marble #14” (1981), and a Senufo female form

From left: Theo van Doesburg, “Composition XX” (1920); Juan Gris, “Poires et raisins sur une table,” (1913); Jasper Johns, “Three Flags” (1958
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A different iteration of the living room. Robert Delaunay’s “Premier Disque,” Morris Louis’ “Number 1-33” (1961), Burkina Faso wood mask, Willem de Kooning's “Villa Borghese” (1960), Larry Poons’ "Julie" (1963)

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As displayed on a red lacquer Mandarin chest, the small size of Giacometti’s bronze “Man Walking Quickly Under the Rain” (1948) is in contrast with Joan Miró’s “Le Chat Blanc.”
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An office features a wood Senufo female figure, Mark Rothko’s “No. 8” (1952), Paul Klee’s “Abgang (Departure of the Ghost)” (1931), Roy Lichtenstein “Ceramic Head with Blue Shadow” (1966), and Alexander Calder’s “Bougainvillea” (1945).
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Frank Stella, “Luis Miguel Dominguin” (1960) and Ernest Trova, “Study/Falling Man (Car Man)” (1966).
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Miniatures grouped together in a hallway: (top, l. to r.) Pablo Picasso’s “New Hebrides Mask,” Ad Reinhardt’s “Blue Composition”; (middle)Jean-Paul Riopelle’s “Printemps” (1952), Willem de Kooning, “Yellow Woman,” Robert Motherwell’s “Spanish Elegy,” Jackson Pollock’s “Silver and Black,” Louise Nevelson’s “Moon Garden Series;” (bottom) Marcel Duchamp’s “Self-Portrait in Profile,” and a work by Man Ray.
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