James Jewett Stillman
American, 1850 – 1918
Person TypeNon-Person
BiographyStillman lent the painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 1921 until 1926. James Stillman was the fifteenth richest man in America at the turn of the century, a distinction achieved by parlaying his father’s Texas banking and railroad interests into, among other things, a controlling interest in the National City Bank of New York (now Citibank). His son, Charles Chauncey Stillman (1877–1926), was one of Harvard’s greatest benefactors. After the death of James Stillman in 1918 and Charles Chauncey Stillman in 1926, an auction of their art holdings was held in 1927. They owned a number of important paintings, including Pontormo’s Portrait of a Halberdier at the Getty Museum and Giovanni Moroni’s Portrait of Gian Federico Madruzzo now at the National Gallery, London.