Chauncey Stillman
Chauncey Devereux Stillman (November 9, 1907 – January 24, 1989) was an American philanthropist, art collector, conservationist, and banking heir.
[6][1][2] His parents were Mary Estelle Wight (1870–1925) and Charles Chauncey Stillman (1877–1926), who was a financier and one of Harvard University's "greatest benefactors.
[19][15] As a civilian in 1947, he worked for the newly created United States Department of Defense under its first secretary, James Forrestal.
[22][6][4] Around 1936, he joined Ralph Borsodi in becoming a founding board member of the Independence Foundation, Inc., which secured land for homesteading communities.
[6][4] Its purpose was to “make, institute, conduct and carry out every manner and kind of scientific, agricultural, horticultural, or biological experiment, research, study and investigation, and in any other way to assist in improving and developing country life and to experiment, research, study and investigate with regard to the most satisfactory means of economic and social life in rural communities.”[14] Later, the foundation's mission would expand to encompass his diverse interests, “to display art and period furniture; to sponsor religious charitable, scientific, and literary programs; to use for cultural activities; public outdoor recreation and scenic enjoyment; protection of natural environmental systems; conservation, cultural, intellectual, religious, and recreations purposes; preservation of natural wildlife; and to make other contributions and gifts, but only if made for exclusively public purposes.”[6] He was president of the foundation's board of trustees until his death.
[6] In 1959, Stillman donated a new Our Lady's Chapel at the Immaculate Conception Church in Brownsville, Texas, a community founded by his great-grandfather.
[11] Stillman married Theodora Moran Jay of New York City on January 21, 1939, in a chapel in her grandmother's house.
[6][37] However, his collection also included works by James E. Buttersworth, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Nicolas Lancret, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, John Singer Sargent, Gilbert Stuart, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
[6] Stillman was also an avid equestrian and saw the beauty of rural Dutchess County, New York, while riding the Millbrook Hunt.
[8][21][38][5] In 1939, he hired the architect L. Bancel LaFarge to create a brick and brownstone Georgian-style house at Wethersfield that included a private chapel, a library decorated with wood carvings from a Scottish castle, and a room with a vaulted ceiling with frescoes by Pietro Annigoni to display Portrait of a Halberdier.
[4][15][10] Designed by Evelyn N. Poehler, the gardens include "a painterly sequence of Italian Renaissance–inspired spaces was conjured, linked by sweeping terraces, speckled with thrilling statues in a modern-classical style, and punctuated by an ornamental oval pool with water dyed jet-black to mirror the passage of the sun.
"[2][15] The Italian Gardens combine perennials and evergreens with stonework, a swimming pool (now a reflecting pond), the brick Grasshopper House folly, and the Belvedere, a circular temple with six columns.
[21][8] In addition, Poehler designed a 7-acre (2.8 ha) Wilderness Garden with trails and carriage drives through a deciduous woodland with ferns, mountain laurels, and rhododendrons as an "allegorical journey" based on Dante's Divine Comedy—like the bosci of the Italian Renaissance.
[38][21][5] The Woodland Garden also features statues by Peter Watts and Jozef Stachura that represent figures from Greek and Roman mythology.
Westerly, his 72-ft, Sparkman & Stephens-designed ketch-rigged sailing yacht was seconded to the Coast Guard for use as a patrol boat during World War II.
[5] To help expand the foundation's reach, Portrait of a Halberdier was sold at auction in 1989 to the Getty Museum for $34 million, then the highest price ever paid for an old master.
