Doris Andrews, 82, artist, preservationist

Doris Bass Andrews of Ridgefield, a moving force in the creation of the Weir Farm National Historic Site and the surrounding Weir Preserve in Ridgefield and Wilton, died May 25, 2003, at Danbury Hospital after a lengthy illness. She was 82 years old..
Born in Louisville, Ky., on Aug. 14, 1920, Mrs. Andrews was the daughter of the late Dr. Albert L. and Dorothy Kelly Bass. She is the great-granddaughter of William Kelly, who discovered the pneumatic process for refining steel.
After graduating from the Erskine School in Boston, she returned to her home town, where, during World War II, she mastered Morse Code and served as a telegraph operator for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Subsequently she moved to New York City to study at the Art Students League. There she met a fellow art student, Charles Sperry Andrews III, whom she married in 1948.
In 1957, the couple bought as their home the house, art studios and part of the farm that had been owned during the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the American Impressionist painter Julian Alden Weir, and subsequently by Weir’s daughter Dorothy and her husband, the sculptor Mahonri Young.
From 1882 to 1919 the farm had been a gathering place for Weir and his wide circle of friends including Albert Pinkham Ryder, Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargent, and John Twachtman, who gathered to socialize and to paint. Following the Youngs, Mrs. Andrews and her husband, both watercolorists, were the third generation of working artists to live at Weir Farm.
When it became clear that parcels of this naturally and culturally significant landscape would not withstand pressures for development, Mrs. Andrews and her husband formed a grass-roots organization to help preserve the property for use by the public and visiting artists. After years of work by many people, a substantial portion of the farm was saved, through efforts involving the Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, the State of Connecticut and U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman.
By donation and purchase, the Weir Preserve of the Nature Conservancy was created as a natural area.
According to Nancy Faesy of the Weir Preserve Stewardship Committee, “We owe Doris Andrews immense gratitude for having the vision and energy to get the Weir Preserve organized and expanded to its current 110 acres.”
In 1977, Mrs. Andrews received the Nature Conservancy Connecticut Chapter’s White Oak Award for her work on behalf of the preserve.
In 1990, Congress passed legislation authorizing 60 acres of the historic farm as Weir Farm National Historic Site. It is the only unit of the National Park System in Connecticut, and the only National Park Site in the country that celebrates American painting.
Weir Farm is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is considered the finest remaining landscape associated with American Impressionism.
Mrs. Andrews was a member of the Council of Overseers of the Weir Farm Trust, the non-profit organization that works in partnership with the National Park Service to preserve Weir Farm’s unique resources and provide programs for artists and the visiting public.
In addition, Mrs. Andrews was for many years an active worker for Minks to Sinks of Wilton, a charity fund-raising event on behalf of the Family and Children’s Agency.
“She was intensely devoted as a mother,” said her daughter, Catherine Barrett Andrews. “She was highly opinionated and amazingly stubborn. She had an almost unerringly accurate artistic sense of what was right and what was not right — in everything.”
As an artist, she worked in watercolor and pen and ink. Her daughter recalled an evening when her father, well known for his own artwork, lamented the years she had not pursued her own talent.
“She was a brilliant watercolorist,” Ms. Andrews said. “She really gave up her artwork for him, when they got married and started a family. And at one point my father and bunch of their artist friends were sitting around and my brother Sperry produced a number of her early works, watercolors, and everyone present was just amazed at how beautiful they were. There was just this stunned silence. And my father said ‘Oh my God, I should have given up my life for hers.’ ”
She is survived by her husband; a daughter, Catherine Barrett Andrews of Madison, Ga.; two sons, Charles Sperry Andrews IV of Sedona, Ariz., and Albert Ballard Andrews of Wilton; and a brother, Bruce Bass of Louisville. She also leaves seven grandchildren, including Benjamin, Nathaniel and Sebastian Andrews of Wilton.
A memorial service is being planned at The Weir Farm, and will be announced.
The family requests that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the Weir Farm Trust at 735 Nod Hill road, Wilton, CT 06897.