This lot is exempt from Sales Tax.

PROPERTY FROM THE NELDA C. AND H.J. LUTCHER STARK FOUNDATION SOLD TO BENEFIT THE ACQUISITIONS FUND (LOTS 1-16, 200-216) The Nelda C. and H.J. Lutcher Stark Foundation, Orange, Texas is the legacy of the Lutcher and Stark families, who have had a major influence on the artistic and cultural development of the Southeast Texas region. Henry Jacob Lutcher, the son of an immigrant butcher, was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania in 1836. Having bought a local sawmill in 1866, Lutcher explored the vast forests of Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana, and in January 1877 he transferred the mill's principle operations to Orange, Texas, having seen the potential in the huge pine and cypress timber stands on both sides of the Sabine river. One of the Lutcher daughters, Miriam, married a local sawmill worker and livery stable operator, William Henry Stark, and in the 1890s she started to collect art on a grand scale. Over a period of some fifty years she amassed a vast collection of art, including paintings, decorative objects, rare books and manuscripts, much of which she donated to the University of Texas at Austin in 1926. Her son, Henry Jacob Lutcher Stark was their only surviving child and sole heir to the Starks' by now considerable fortune. He too started to collect both art and rare books with his wife, Nita Hill of Austin, and in 1927 they embarked on a lengthy trip to Europe, when they purchased the Gerrit Dou (lot 12 in this sale) and other Old Master paintings. Nita died in 1939 and Lutcher Stark remarried twice (his second wife also dying prematurely), lastly to Nelda Childers in 1943. In Stark's later life his collecting took an entirely new direction, as a result of his family's annual summer pilgrimages through Texas and New Mexico, including stops at the art colonies of Taos and Santa Fe, where he became interested in Southwestern art. He and Nelda (fig. 1) assembled a world class collection of paintings in this category, including important works by Frederic Remington, C.M. Russell, W. Herbert Dunton, Freemont Ellis, Joseph Henry Sharp and Georgia O'Keefe, and it is for this that the museum is best known today. In 1961, the Starks established the Nelda C. and H.J. Lutcher Stark Foundation. After Stark's death in 1965, his widow, Nelda, saw to it that the aims of the foundation carried on their vision, and she supervised the construction of the Stark Museum of Art to house their considerable art collection. At present, the Foundation administers the art museum, the Frances and Ann Lutcher Theater for the Performing Arts, the W.H. Stark House, and 'Shangri-La', their extensive gardens in Orange, as well as numerous other charitable projects in Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana.

Leonard Bramer (Delft 1596-1674)

Saint Paul imprisoned at Philippi

Details

Leonard Bramer (Delft 1596-1674)
Saint Paul imprisoned at Philippi
oil on panel
13 3/8 x 11¼ in. (34 x 28.6 cm.)

Provenance

with J. & S. Goldschmidt, Frankfurt am Main, from whom purchased by Mrs. W.H. Stark on 30 May 1927.

Special notice

This lot is exempt from Sales Tax.

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