stephen and sterling

About ten days ago, we headed west over the mountains to the Berkshires for our second visit of the summer. This time, we stayed in another of our favorite B&Bs, a little place at the end of the road with just three guest rooms. The owner, Richard, has settled down half way up a mountain, next to a state park with hundreds of acres to roam in, and a beautiful view from his front porch. To this, he's added llamas and a huge organic garden. The afternoon we arrived, we chatted in his living room while a wild turkey roamed around his yard.

We went to two classical concerts (and got to hear Beethoven's Emperor Concerto one night and the Eroica Symphony the next), and then to a fun Pops concert with Rockapella the last night (they make a point about being an a capella group, having made a commitment to never work with instruments, getting an invitation from the Pops, and not hesitating before accepting), followed by fireworks. We hiked around, but not up, Mount Greylock, bumped into a set of friends, intentionally met another set of friends, and wandered around funky, but gentrifying Great Barrington.

We also made it up to the Clark Institute, which is not as far away from where we stayed as I'd feared; I'm eager to go back on future visits. The institute was founded by Sterling (a beneficiary of the Singer Sewing machine money) and Francine (a former Parisian showgirl) as a showplace for their enormous art collection. It turns out that Sterling, whom everyone called Robin, had a brother Stephen. They were close for a long time, but had a falling out, involving bloodshed, after which they never spoke again. But it turns out that Stephen also collected art. And the current exhibit brought some of the yummiest of their collections together for the first time.

Sterling had no children. He collected and collected, but never sold or even loaned any pieces to speak of. And of course, he and his wife founded an important museum. His brother Stephen, on the other hand, had four children, bought just as much as his brother but sold many pieces, loaned his works out all the time, and when he died, left the remainder of his collection to about ten museums.

Their collections reveal that they had overlapping tastes. Between them, they had vast numbers of John Singer Sargents, Homers, and Renoirs. Sterling's taste was a little more conservative than Stephen's. Stephen, after all, collected hideous paintings by young upstarts such as Picasso and Hopper -- those sorts of artists who would never amount to much. And they were competitive in their collecting, sometimes even secretly buying a piece that the other was trying to sell.

The exhibit was beautifully curated. Paintings tended to be hung in pairs, often one piece from Sterling's collection and another, similar one, from Stephen's. Each piece was accompanied by a long explanation, often describing why it was typical of one or the other's taste, or mentioning what was happening in the life of the collector at the time of purchase.

And the paintings, oh my. At nearly each stopping point, I felt like crying out "Oh *this* one's here!" I was struck by a little still Renoir still life of onions, and there was of course the lovely Renoir of a sleeping girl in a chair, head thrown back and a cat in her lap.

Interestingly, Robert felt more aligned with Sterling's taste, and I with Stephen's.

We were also lucky enough to be at the museum for a lecture about the lives of these two men. The lecture was by an art historian, one who was funny and down to earth, and not at all as pedantic as many people in that field. I would have been delighted to take classes from this man, as is the privilege of Williams Colleges students.

It is always good to come home; our drive was uncomplicatedly easy. More swirls around, but I shall write of that another time.