Lois Landauer, 90, animal portraitist
Hyfler/Rosner
BYLINE: BY LAUREN TERRAZZANO. STAFF WRITER
Newsday
Lois Landauer, an East Hampton animal portraitist and pet
store owner who painted creatures ranging from the Queen
Mother's corgis to the dogs and cats of everyday people,
died March 18 at Southampton Hospital. She was 90 and died
of emphysema complications.
"She loved all animals," said her longtime friend Marion
Sanger of East Hampton. "In the middle of summer, when
traffic was at its worst in East Hampton, she would go and
stop cars if an unleashed dog was trying to cross the
street."
She operated Unique Boutique for Pets and Pets Painted with
Love on a busy stretch of Main Street for 18 years, until
1991 when the Polo Ralph Lauren store took over the space.
"Every day, she would put a water bowl outside her store for
the dogs who came by. She asked the people who operated
Ralph Lauren if they would continue to put the bowl outside,
but they said no," Sanger said.
Born in Little Rock, Ark., in 1915, Landauer attended the
Rhode Island School of Design and was a lieutenant in the
Women's Army Corps from 1943 to 1946, serving as a
public-relations officer. That's where Sanger met her, she
said.
After the Army, she wrote and directed weekly dramatic radio
shows. For years, she worked in the art department at Saks
Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and lived in a small apartment in
Brooklyn Heights, where she wasn't allowed to have pets.
Finally, in 1972, she moved to East Hampton and opened her
businesses a year later.
She also got a cat, one of several she would have in her
final years. The last one was named Connie, a tabby she had
until a few years ago, when she could no longer care for
her.
The store was well known throughout East Hampton, and some
of her most famous customers included John F. Kennedy Jr.,
who as a boy came into the shop to buy a portrait of a dog
for his mother, Sanger said. When he didn't have the correct
amount of money, she took what he happened to have in his
pocket.
She was also commissioned before the store closed to paint
portraits of the Queen Mother's corgis, but Sanger didn't
remember the exact date the paintings were commissioned. She
remembered only that Landauer didn't charge the Queen Mother
for her services.
After she closed the store, she was widely known for feeding
the ducks in East Hampton's David's Lane Pond and for
providing dog treats to her canine friends at a beach in
Amagansett.
At Landauer's request, no services were held. Her friends
asked that donations be made in her memory to the Animal
Rescue Fund in East Hampton, P.O. Box 901, Wainscott, NY,
11975.