Renee G. Eaton

Renee Katherine Grignard Eaton died on October 22, 2023. She was 94 years old.

Mrs. Eaton was born on July 7, 1929, in New York City, the daughter of Emile Etienne Grignard and Katherine Higgins Grignard, and the granddaughter of Albert Marie Etienne Grignard of France and Marie Milada Mazac Czerny of Bohemia. Her grandparents emigrated from France to Canada, where Albert was an engineer for the 1860 World’s Fair in Montreal, known as the Grand Exhibition of the Industrial Products of United Canada at the Crystal Palace, and later founded the Grignard Lithograph Company, whose works hang today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Renee’s father, Emile, was born in Canada. The family later emigrated from Canada to New York City in or around 1905, and then to Massachusetts where Mrs. Eaton’s father met and married her mother, Katherine, before settling in Queens, New York.

As a child, Mrs. Eaton contracted polio which developed into double scoliosis of the spine. Despite that devastating diagnosis, Mrs. Eaton did not allow polio to dictate her life. Instead, she dedicated herself to extensive and painful physical therapies and eventually became an athlete, avid skier, adventurer, and world traveler. Her tenacity and pursuit of life in the face of daunting odds were an inspiration to all.

Mrs. Eaton attended St. Lawrence University. She began working at the Asia Society in New York City shortly after its organization in 1956. Mrs. Eaton travelled extensively in India and throughout Asia. In the early 1960s, Mrs. Eaton was instrumental in establishing a series of recordings of traditional Indian music for the United States market. In 1975, she moved to San Francisco and became the Chairman of the California Historical Society.

Mrs. Eaton had always been interested in art and studied at the Museum of Modern Art. After moving to California, Mrs. Eaton dedicated herself to her artistic passion and became an artist of renown, winning awards for her artworks, most notably her Lascaux pieces, which provided a modern interpretation of the prehistoric drawings found in the Lascaux caves in France for which she received great acclaim.

In 1977, she married William D. Eaton, an accomplished Californian author, professor, and arbitration lawyer. The couple were wed in Roslyn, New York, and resided in San Francisco, Mill Valley, and Carmel, California, as well as Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Mr. Eaton enthusiastically supported Mrs. Eaton’s art career, traveling with her to displays of her works around the world, including New York, Paris, Beijing, and Oslo. The couple pursued an active and adventurous life, skiing well into their 70s, hiking, wine collecting, cooking, and traveling around the world, among other things. They were married for 35 years until Mr. Eaton’s death in 2012. Following her husband’s death, Mrs. Eaton moved in 2014 to Glen Cove, New York, to be closer to her sister, brother, and many nieces and nephews.

Mrs. Eaton was the sister of Eliane Grignard Stockell, Vivienne Grignard Pecau, and Emile Etienne Grignard, Jr., and the aunt of Albert Grignard Stockell, all of whom predeceased her. She is survived by eight nieces and nephews, Mercer Logan Stockell, Catherine Stockell Bannon, William Grignard Pecau, Guy Caroll Pecau, Marie Pecau McDonald, Vivienne Pecau Phelan, Annette Grignard, and Emile Etienne Grignard III. Her fierce independence, pioneering spirit, and contributions to the arts and culture have been an inspiration to all who have known her. As Renee said of her art in 2001, following the attacks on the World Trade Center, “My abstract canvases speak to [the] dual existence of light and darkness – the inner world of the spirit replete with good intentions and the outer world sown with disharmony and chaos.”