Walter Leighton Clark was an American businessman, inventor, and artist based in Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Stockbridge is a town in Berkshire County in Western Massachusetts. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 1,947 at the 2010 census...

 and New York City. Among other achievements, in 1923 he founded with John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...

 the Grand Central Art Galleries

Grand Central Art Galleries

The Grand Central Art Galleries were the exhibition and administrative space of the nonprofit Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association, an artists' cooperative established in 1922 by Walter Leighton Clark together with John Singer Sargent, Edmund Greacen, and others...

, located within New York City's Grand Central Terminal

Grand Central Terminal

Grand Central Terminal —often incorrectly called Grand Central Station, or shortened to simply Grand Central—is a terminal station at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States...

, to offer notable American artists the opportunity to exhibit their work in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 without having to send it abroad. Together with sculptor Daniel Chester French

Daniel Chester French

Daniel Chester French was an American sculptor. His best-known work is the sculpture of a seated Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.-Life and career:...

 and Dr. Austen Fox Riggs, Clark also played a central role in the founding of the Berkshire Theatre Festival

Berkshire Theatre Festival

The Berkshire Theatre Festival is one of the oldest professional performing arts venues in the Berkshires, celebrating its 80th anniversary season in 2008.-History:...

 in Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Stockbridge is a town in Berkshire County in Western Massachusetts. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 1,947 at the 2010 census...

. When the Stockbridge Casino

Stockbridge Casino

The Stockbridge Casino is a historic building now at East Main Street at Yale Hill Road in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Designed by Stanford White, the casino was built in 1887 and for many years was a popular attraction. After falling into decline, the building was saved by businessman and artist...

, designed by Stanford White

Stanford White

Stanford White was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be found...

 in 1887, fell into disuse, Clark, French, and Riggs purchased the building and had it moved to its current location. After renovations, the Berkshire Playhouse opened in 1928, and as the Berkshire Theatre Festival continues to be one of the region's centers of cultural life.

Raised a Quaker, Clark kept the telltale pronouns of that faith, using "thee," "thy" and "thou" even after decades of life in Manhattan and overseas. His autobiography, "Leaves From an Artist's Memory," was published posthumously in 1937, reportedly having been dictated to his sister Emma Killé Clark, from his sick-bed. According to family oral history, she could be heard saying "Thee can't say that!" to him from time to time during the dictation. It is assumed he was telling stories that he shouldn't have, and the finished work has a scrubbed feeling that might be explained by this.

"Leaves" is essentially an account of Clark's boyhood adventures and subsequent rise from a machine-shop apprentice to industrialist and world traveler. In the book Clark detailed his friendships with Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, and entrepreneur who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century...

, John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...

, Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

, Charles Dana Gibson

Charles Dana Gibson

Charles Dana Gibson was an American graphic artist, best known for his creation of the Gibson Girl, an iconic representation of the beautiful and independent American woman at the turn of the 20th century....

, Dame Ellen Terry, George Westinghouse

George Westinghouse

George Westinghouse, Jr was an American entrepreneur and engineer who invented the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry. Westinghouse was one of Thomas Edison's main rivals in the early implementation of the American electricity system...

, Julius Rosenwald

Julius Rosenwald

Julius Rosenwald was a U.S. clothier, manufacturer, business executive, and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for the Rosenwald Fund which donated millions to support the education of African American children in the rural South, as well...

, James A. Farrell

James A. Farrell

James Augustine Farrell was president of US Steel from 1911 to 1932. A major business figure of his era, Farrell expanded US Steel by a factor of five during his Presidency, turning it into America's first billion-dollar company...

, George Pullman

George Pullman

George Mortimer Pullman was an American inventor and industrialist. He is known as the inventor of the Pullman sleeping car, and for violently suppressing striking workers in the company town he created, Pullman .-Background:Born in Brocton, New York, his family moved to Albion,...

, Thomas Hart Benton

Thomas Hart Benton (senator)

Thomas Hart Benton , nicknamed "Old Bullion", was a U.S. Senator from Missouri and a staunch advocate of westward expansion of the United States. He served in the Senate from 1821 to 1851, becoming the first member of that body to serve five terms...

, and many others. During his time in Stockbridge he also studied sculpture with Daniel Chester French

Daniel Chester French

Daniel Chester French was an American sculptor. His best-known work is the sculpture of a seated Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.-Life and career:...

, and in 1916 acted as pallbearer for the funeral of Alexander Wilson Drake

Alexander Wilson Drake

Alexander Wilson Drake was an American artist, collector and critic, born near Westfield, NJ. He studied wood engraving under John W. Orr of New York city, as well as oil and water-color painting. He was in the wood engraving business on his own account in New York city from 1865 to 1870...

.

Clark Collection Sold

A New York Times clipping from May 13, 1936 details the sale of the estate of Walter Leighton Clark. Items sold included two paintings: "Salome Receiving the Head of John the Baptist" by Bernardino Luini

Bernardino Luini

Bernardino Luini was a North Italian painter from Leonardo's circle. Both Luini and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio were said to have worked with Leonardo directly; he was described to have taken "as much from Leonardo as his native roots enabled him to comprehend". Consequently many of his works were...

, sold for $1000, and Sir Anthony Van Dyck's "Portrait of Marten Rijckaert", sold for $720. The latter currently resides in the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain.

Recent Sales

The most recent sale of his work was The Pooch

The Pooch

The Pooch is a 1932 Our Gang short comedy film directed by Robert F. McGowan. It was the 115th Our Gang short that was released.-Plot:Cheerful vagrant Stymie tries to get back in the good graces of the gang after stealing their pies...

sold by Christie's in New York in June 2007

Time Magazine Article