Polly Kraft, 89, Artist and Doyenne
Polly Kraft, an artist and longtime Wainscott summer resident, died on Jan. 1 at home in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., of pancreatic cancer. She was 89.
Mrs. Kraft was a prolific painter of still lifes. The images were not static, but filled with the busyness of life — a rumpled bed with a shawl among the sheets and scattered mail, a bowl of browning apple quarters replete with seeds. A 1981 quote from the art critic John Russell cited in her Washington Post obituary describes her work as the “poetry of dishevelment.”
“She specialized in the domestic pile-up — cushions knocked out of shape, books and magazines left askew, hasty departures acted out in verismo style,” Mr. Russell wrote in The New York Times.
Her artwork, in both watercolor and oil, was featured in prestigious galleries in Washington and New York, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Addison/ Ripley Fine Art, and the Fischbach Art Gallery. Locally, Mrs. Kraft’s work was hung in many East End houses, and for years it was exhibited at the Elaine Benson Gallery in Bridgehampton. The late gallery owner was a close friend. “I remember a wonderful series of watercolors Polly painted of bumble bees,” Ms. Benson’s daughter, Kimberly Goff, said.
Mrs. Kraft’s art also was seen at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller on Newtown Lane in East Hampton. One exhibition there was of portraits of her friends, among them the author Peter Matthiessen, the film and stage director Gene Saks, and the film director Sidney Lumet with his wife, Mary (Piedy) Lumet.
At the house she owned in Wainscott’s Georgica Association for decades, she relished entertaining on her small screened-in porch overlooking the pond, though there was rarely room for everyone to sit down, particularly at New Year’s Day lunches. Friends said her sharp wit and lively personality also made her a sought-after guest. “Polly just lit up the room,” Ms. Lumet said.
She also had a large circle of friends in Washington, D.C, where for decades she was one of Georgetown’s power doyennes, especially during her 26-year marriage to the widely syndicated news columnist Joe Kraft, and after his death in 1986, through her marriage to Lloyd Cutler, a high-profile Washington, D.C., lawyer, who died in 2005.
For years she and Ms. Lumet had talked about how they wanted their deaths to be quick and painless when the time came. And so it was that after Mrs. Kraft’s cancer diagnosis, she called her friend with excitement: “Good news! I’ve got pancreatic cancer! There will be no pain. I’ll just go to sleep.”
Mrs. Kraft was determined to live until Hillary Clinton was elected president and to die before Donald Trump was inaugurated. The latter wish was realized at her death, with her children from her first marriage, to Whitney Stevens — David Stevens of Denver and Mark Stevens of New York City and Brookhaven — at her side.
She was born on July 15, 1927, in Spokane, Wash., to John Winton and the former Janette Main. A memorial service will be held at Christ Church in Georgetown at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday.