Robert Sterling Clark  

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Robert Sterling Clark (June 25, 1877 – December 29, 1956), an heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune, was an American art collector, horse breeder, and philanthropist.

Art collecting

Sterling Clark purchased his first Impressionist painting, Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Girl Crocheting, in 1916. He and his wife Francine (1876–1960) continued to collect art rapidly and towards the end of their lives established their collection as a museum near the campus of Williams College in Williamstown Mass. They did this after originally making plans with his brothers Stephen Carlton Clark and F. Ambrose Clark to combine their collections in a single art museum in Cooperstown.

After a falling out among the brothers, Sterling not only cancelled such plans but also withdrew his share of the family fortune from the collective trust. He established his own foundation and sold off or donated all of his property holdings in Cooperstown. He donated the Ernest Flagg designed neoclassic YMCA building commissioned by his mother, Elizabeth Scriven Clark, in 1898 to the village in 1932, and it now houses village offices, the library and the Cooperstown Art Association. Almost no communication between Stephen and Sterling occurred again.

Over the next five decades he and his wife collected numerous paintings by Renoir, plus dozens of paintings, sculptures and pastels by other Impressionist artists.In 1950, Sterling and Francine Clark chartered the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute as a home for their extensive art collection.

The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts opened its doors to the public in 1955. According to TIME magazine, "In building their $3,000,000 Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, the Clarks ignored costs (Local boosters boast that the marble for the new museum was the biggest single order in Vermont since the U.S. Supreme Court.) but insisted on quality." Works in the collection included over 30 Renoirs as well as Dutch, Spanish and American painters such as Winslow Homer, Goya, Frans Hals, and Degas.

See also




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