Hugh Townley

BETHEL—Hugh Townley, 85, died Friday, Feb. 1, 2008 at his home in Bethel, where he has lived for the past 11 years.

A sculptor, printmaker, and Professor Emeritus of Art at Brown University, he was born in Lafayette, Ind. At age 19, he enlisted in the U. S. Army and served for three and a half years, the last two in Europe.

In 1945, he enrolled in the Fine Arts program at the University of Wisconsin. One of his teachers suggested that he study with Ossip Zadkine in Paris, which he did. That experience and his subsequent year working for the Marshall Plan in The Hague, gave him extraordinary breadth of experience in the post World War II art world. The sculpture he produced during this period earned him his first one-man show.

After further studies in Paris and London he returned to the United States in 1952. Starting at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, he embarked on a distinguished teaching career, which included posts at Beloit College, Boston University and Harvard University before he began teaching at Brown University in 1961.

After his retirement from Brown as Professor Emeritus in 1991 he and his late wife, the artist and writer Mary Ross Townley, moved to a house on the White River in Bethel.

He was a Fellow at the Yaddo Foundation (1964) and at the Tamarind Foundation for Lithography (1969). He was honored by the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1967), and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (1980), was given a one-person show at the St. Gaudens Historical Site in 2002 and was included in the National Academy exhibition in New York City in 2004. His work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum in New York, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Fogg Museum of Harvard University, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Rhode Island School of Design, Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Milwaukee Art Center, The DeCordova Museum in Lincoln Mass., the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art in Forth Worth, Texas, and the San Francisco Museum of Art, among others; as well as in 32 private collections.

Survivors include his son, Merlyn Townley and his companion, Cynthia (Toni) King, both of Bethel.

Services will be at the convenience of the family.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be sent to Visiting Nurse Association & Hospice of Vermont and New Hampshire, P.O. Box 976, White River Junction, Vt. 05001. Online condolences may be left at www.dayfunerals.com.

Arrangements are by the Day Funeral Home in Randolph.

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