By Andrew Meacham, Times Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
CLEARWATER — For much of her adult life, Renee Duke traveled in some of the world's most cultured circles.
She studied painting at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, and covered the art galleries for the International Herald Tribune. She also lived in Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Belgium, and held numerous one-woman shows, where she sold her misty seascapes to art collectors.
"She was really a highly cultured woman who was tremendously approachable," said Riggs Eckelberry, 58, her son. "There was none of the attitude you associate with class."
Ms. Duke was born in 1927 in New York City. She studied fine arts at Radcliffe College, where she met Harvard liberal arts student Tener Eckelberry.
They married in 1948. Her husband's work with Procter & Gamble took them to North America, South America and Europe. In ...