Nicholas Fox Weber, author of the acclaimed Patron Saints (βExhilarating avant-garde entertainmentββSam Hunter, The New York Times Book Review) and Balthus (βThe authoritative account of his life and workββMichael Ravitch, Newsday), gives us now the idiosyncratic lives of Sterling and Stephen Clarkβtwo of Americaβs greatest art collectors, heirs to the Singer sewing machine fortune, and for decades enemies of each other. He tells the story, as well, of the two generations that preceded theirs, giving us an intimate portrait of one of the least known of Americaβs richest families.
He begins with Edward Clarkβthe brothersβ grandfather, who amassed the Clark fortune in the late-nineteenth centuryβa man with nerves of steel; a Sunday school teacher who became the business partner of the wild inventor and genius Isaac Merritt Singer. And, by the turn of the twentieth century, was the major stockholder of the Singer Manufacturing Company.
We follow Edwardβs rise as a real estate wizard making headlines in 1880 when he commissioned Manhattanβs first luxury apartment building. The house was called βClarkβs Follyβ; today itβs known as the Dakota.
We see Clarkβs sonβAlfredβenigmatic and famously reclusive; at thirty-eight he inherited $50 million and became one of the countryβs richest men. An image of proprietyβgood husband, father of fourβin Europe, he led a secret homosexual life. Alfred was a man with a passion for art and charity, which he passed on to his four sons, in particular Sterling and Stephen Clark.
In a highly public case, Sterling sued his three brothers over issues of inheritance, and then never spoke to them again.
He was one of the central figures linked to a bizarre and little-known attempted coup against Franklin Delano Rooseveltβs presidency. We are told what really happened and whyβand who in American politics was implicated but never prosecuted.
Sterlingβs brotherβStephenβself-effacing and responsibleβbecame chairman and president of the Museum of Modern Art and gave that institution its first painting, Edward Hopperβs House by the Railroad. Thirteen years later, in an act that provoked intense controversy, Stephen dismissed the Museumβs visionary founding director, Alfred Barr, who for more than a decade had single-handedly established the collection and exhibition programs that determined how the art of the twentieth century was regarded.
Stephen gave or bequeathed to museums many of the paintings that today are still their greatest attractions.
With authority, insight, and a flair for evoking time and place, Weber examines the depths of the brothersβ passions, the vehemence of their lifelong feud, the great art they acquired, and the profound and lasting impact they had on artistic vision in America.
© 2003-2026