Blanche Weiss

After a long and active life, Blanche Weiss of West Palm Beach slipped her mortal restraints February 27, at the age of 102. Blanche was born to Russian emigres in Brooklyn, New York, in 1922. In youth she first displayed lifelong talents for poetry and drawing, winning a high school scholarship to attend figure drawing class at the Art Students League of New York. It was there, in the League's second floor gallery, that she met Morris Weiss, a professional cartoonist. The couple married in 1944, and eventually left the city to raise a family in suburban New Jersey. Blanche acted as copy editor and adviser for her husband, providing counsel on acquisitions and sales for the family's growing collection of American illustration. Although family was always her priority, she continued to draw and paint in oils and pastels. In mid-life, when the children were grown, Blanche returned to the League to study with the prominent African-American artist, Hughie Lee-Smith. Later still, she attended painting workshops well into her eighties. She was often the most gifted student in a class, as well as the most vocally demonstrative when displeased with her work. Her studies from the live model were well drawn and especially sensitive to the personality and humanity of her subjects. In 1960, the family relocated to North Miami. Blanche's fourth child was belatedly diagnosed as autistic, at a time when the condition was little known and less understood. She and Morris located qualified teachers, procured classrooms, and founded the Miami Society for Autistic Children, which became a model for similar programs nationwide. As their children grew up and moved across the country, Blanche and Morris traveled, spending several summers in the New York metropolitan area and vacationing with friends in Europe. In the mid-1980s, they settled in West Palm Beach. There Blanche sat in a screened patio that overlooked a banana tree-lined canal, caring for her adopted feral cats, polishing off Times crossword puzzles and painting still lifes and the occasional portrait. She continued to play hostess to friends, artists, and journalists. Later in the decade, Blanche's portrait art—along with that of her husband and their son, Jerry—was featured in a New York City gallery exhibition. After sixty-nine years of marriage, Morris passed in 2014. Thereafter, Blanche lived alone with nursing assistance, until ailing health necessitated her move into a healthcare facility in 2020. She remained surrounded by artwork, and retained an interest in people until the end. Self-portraits drawn during her youth, as well as photographs from early adulthood, reveal Blanche's dark eyes and jet-black hair, which later turned a beautiful, natural silver. Her round face and luminous smile are evident in numerous photographs taken throughout her life, as well as in a number of affectionate caricatures drawn by her husband. One of the defining, if unspoken pleasures, of family life was the opportunity to make her laugh. She did so readily, easily. Blanche Weiss is survived by her four loving children: daughter Wendy and sons Jacob, Jerry and David.