Obituaries - Dec. 18, 1987

Emily Hall Tremaine, Modern Art Collector

Emily Hall Tremaine, believed in her 80s, who with her husband, Burton, was one of the nation’s leading collectors of modern art. In 1980 the Tremaines were in the news nationally when they sold the Jasper Johns painting “Three Flags” to the Whitney Museum for $1 million, then believed the highest price ever paid for the work of a living artist. They had purchased the painting in 1959 for $900. Their collection of more than 400 works by American and European artists included paintings by Picasso, Braque and Klee. An exhibit of about 150 of their objets d’art was staged in 1984 in Hartford, Conn. In Madison, Conn., on Wednesday of the complications of emphysema.