Elizabeth (Upthegrove) Cheek

ELIZABETH UPTHEGROVE CHEEK

Artist, gardener, and bird lover, Elizabeth Upthegrove Cheek will be remembered at a celebration of her life in Story Chapel at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge MA on Wednesday, October 30, at 11:00am, followed by a reception in Bigelow Chapel. Best known as Betsy, she was born in St. Louis on July 25, 1939, as the first of the three daughters of Elizabeth Cave Upthegrove and Daniel Upthegrove Jr. Frequent visits to the St. Louis Art Museum, a family tradition of formal and dooryard gardening, attendance at performances in the outdoor Muny Opera Theatre, and Latin courses as a student at the Mary Institute School were to have a lasting influence by the time she departed for her freshman year at Vassar College where she majored in Classics. After graduation she returned briefly to St. Louis in 1962 to teach Latin at Mary Institute for two years before moving to New York City to work as an assistant in the Education Department of the English- Speaking Union and to enjoy learning about the continuing evolution of Abstract Expressionism in contemporary painting as she toured galleries with her old St. Louis friend Martha Baer.

Betsy left her job in 1967 to go on an extensive vacation abroad, stopping first in Morocco to visit a close friend. Next on her itinerary was London where fate took a hand. Miss Lilian Moore, Director of Education for the E-SU, had recommended that she stay at an inexpensive pensione in Hyde Park Gate and introduce herself to a young fellow named Richard Cheek, who was there to work on a thesis on the English effort to develop a modern style of architecture in the late 19 th century. Betsy said hello over breakfast one morning, and she and Richard instantly bonded, becoming culture vultures who attended a ballet, classical music concert, play, or opera every evening of the week, visiting museums during the day except when enjoying matinees on Saturdays and Sundays. They eventually travelled together to Cambridge where they decided that they might want to establish an English-speaking union of their own once they returned to the States, an arrangement that was subsequently formalized by marriage in St. Louis in 1970.

Although Betsy had moved to Boston by then, she remained in close contact with the New York art scene, thanks once again to Martha Baer, who had become the head of the Contemporary Art Department at Christie’s Auction House. As a result of this familiarity, Betsy was hired to become the assistant to Kenworth Moffett, the first Curator of Contemporary Art when that department was established at the Museum of Fine Arts in September 1971, featuring American and European painting and sculpture since 1945.

Prior to her appointment at the MFA, Betsy had already been painting on her own, renting studio space in various locations until she and Richard jointly acquired a unit in one the Brickbottom Artists’ Condominium buildings in Somerville MA. Augmenting her work with wide reading in astrology, religion, philosophy, psychology, as well as Classics, she was determined to explore painting as a means of dreaming about life and transcending the limits of time and space. This ambition ultimately led her to become one of the older students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She participated in the four-year program from 1996 through 1999 and then entered the Fifth Year Competition, winning two Travelling Fellowships and a place in the School’s exhibition at the MFA. Her work had already earned recognition by Gallery NAGA whose director, Arthur Dion, had invited her to display her paintings there. They were subsequently included in three shows at the Gallery, twice in 2002 and again in 2005.

Patterns in the natural landscape continued to serve as an inspiration for her paintings, especially the ones she encountered surrounding the former farmhouse on top of Baldwin Hill in North Egremont MA that she and Richard acquired in 2003. The house sits in the middle of a 450-acre agricultural preserve, with a view from the front porch of a lone elm in the middle of the fields, silhouetted against Mount Everett, the second highest mountain in Massachusetts. She chose to add two new gardens close to the house, working with local horticulturists to create a rock garden tapestry on the east side and helping to select the flowers for a perennial border on the west side. When cancer caught up with Betsy twenty years later, this is where she wanted to be, viewing her last sunset from Baldwin Hill before coming to rest on May 27, 2023.

In lieu of flowers, gifts in Betsy’s memory to the Boston Ballet, the Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery, Jacob’s Pillow, or the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston would be greatly appreciated.

Betsy is survived by her husband, Richard, and their son, Daniel Warfield Cheek, whose brother Benjamin Freeman Cheek was lost in 1980; by her first sister Amelia Upthegrove Wheeler, and her son Richard, remembering her husband, Dick, who passed away in 2022; by her second sister Linn Upthegrove Wells and her husband, David, and their two daughters, Jean and Elizabeth; by her sister-in-law, Elizabeth Cheek Morgan, and her husband, Keith, and their three children, Julia, Edward, and William; and by her brother-in-law, Leslie Cheek III, his wife Marilyn, and his three children, Leslie IV, Katharine, and Robert.

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