Milton Howarth; watercolorist
Hyfler/Rosner
October 28, 2003 Tuesday
HEADLINE: Milton Howarth, artist of St. Petersburg scenes
BYLINE: CRAIG BASSE
ST. PETERSBURG - Milton B. Howarth, a watercolorist who captured historic
St. Petersburg in his art, has died at 84.
Mr. Howarth, whose paintings were featured in a 2000 commemorative city
calendar, died Sunday (Oct. 26, 2003) at home.
Some of his 20 original, full-size watercolors of historic city settings are
still displayed in City Council offices at City Hall.
In the late 1970s, a city-sponsored art committee commissioned him to create
the paintings. Scenes span 100 years with revelations of architectural
details and ambience of the town's early period.
Born Milton Bailey Howarth in Royal Oak, Mich., he moved to St. Petersburg
in 1934. He graduated from St. Petersburg High School and studied for a year
at St. Petersburg Junior College. He began his formal art training at the
Carnegie Institute of Technology, which is part of today's Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh.
World War II, in which he was a prisoner of war, interrupted his college
studies, but he returned to earn a bachelor's degree in fine arts and
continued to study art in France, Germany and throughout the United States.
Captured in 1944 by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge, he sketched
the life of his fellow prisoners, and he kept a diary.
"I did the sketches in the dark and hid them under my shirt, so the Germans
wouldn't find them," he recalled in 1999.
His art career included credits as a stage and costume designer, and as a
painter and teacher. He was an art professor at the University of Southern
California, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Bennington
College and the University of Kansas.
Locally, he taught sketching and watercolor painting through the city's
leisure services department.
He was a founding member of the Sathya Sai Baba Center of St. Petersburg and
the New York Drama Clan of Carnegie Mellon University.
Survivors include two sisters, Marjorie Ryll, Tallahassee, and Esther
Howarth, St. Petersburg, a niece and three nephews.
National Cremation Society, St. Petersburg, is in charge.