Carstairs, James Stewart, c'07-'08. Enlisted private 2d Regiment, Foreign Legion, French Army, August 24, 1914; invalided out of service January 12, 1915. Engagement: Champagne front (Reims and Craonne sectors).
~~ Frederick S. Mead, A.B. (ed), Harvard's Military Record in the World War, 1921, page 163.
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J.S. CARSTAIRS DIES OF SLEEPING POTION
Artist and Collector, 40, Was Embittered
When Treasures
Brought Only $7,000 at Sale.
Left Note for Friend
Bade "Adieu" to "Only Person Who Tried
to Find Me Something" After Loss of Fortune
James Stewart Carstairs, noted artist and collector, died yesterday penniless and embittered. His death ended an unequal struggle between an aesthetic soul and unaccustomed poverty
He was found unconscious in the room he had occupied at the Hotel Blackstone, 50 East Fifty-eighth Street, for the last two weeks. Beside his bed on a table, were two empty bottles which had contained a sleep-inducing drug.
Detectives searching through the rooms found also a note addressed to John J. Cunningham, who is associated with the M. Knoedler Galleries, 14 East Fifty-seventh Street, and who was the friend Mr Carstairs clung to when the depression brought his world topping about his head The police entered the death on the records as "accidental".
Thanks friend for help.
The note which, was dated Sept. 17, read like a farewell. It follows:
"Dear John: Many thanks for helping me out, not only about money, but because you were the only person who tried to find me something. Adieu, Stewart."
Mr. Cunningham, who expressed the opinion that his friend had taken the contents of the bottles as an antidote to insomnia, said he had been with the artist Sunday night and had been impressed by his seemingly improved spirits. He said that Mr Carstairs, who was 40 years old, suffered from a heart affiction and had difficulty in sleeping.
Although no time was lost in calling an ambulance after a hotel employee discovered Mr Carstairs's condition, he died before reaching Metropolitan Hospital. The body was taken to the morgue, where the artist's sister, Mrs. Martin R. Saportas of 1060 Fifth Avenue, claimed it for burial. The cause of death was so apparent that the Medical Examiner's office decided an autopsy was not needed.
Only last July Mr. Carstairs, who had spent a fortune collecting antique furniture and first editions, saw his possessions sold for a song. He had filed a voluntary petition in bankruptcy in april, listing liabilities at $56,407 and assets with a book value of $137,500. Among the creditors he listed was Carroll Carstairs, his brother, who wrote The Lost Generation and who lives at 25 Sutton Place.
Mr. Carstairs had expected his art objects to bring enough at auction to satisfy his creditors, but the sale, which was held in the Plaza Galleries at 3 East Fifty-ninth Street, realized only $7,000. First editions of Whistler, Oscar Wilde, de Maupassant and Rousseau went for a trifle. His paintings sold for less than the value of their frames.
Assails Native Land
In an interview at the time, Mr. Carstairs said he had been ruined and assailed his native land as a country composed of "rogues and children" and governed by "morons". Renouncing art, he threatened to destroy himself unless he could earn a living at some congenial occupation.
"What I cannot understand," he told an interviewer, "is how America can cold-bloodedly butcher a man as I have been butchered. They even took my easels and brushes, my etching set, unfinished canvases, frames without pictures -- all things that could be of no possible use to any but myself."
Speaking of the auction he said: "A William and Mary mirror worth $6,000 went for $400. A William and Mary table valued at $5,000 went for $80. Two Chinese rugs worth more than $1,000 each went for something like $30. People sat on the bed of Charles II, which wouldn't let any one so much as touch, and bought my fifty-seven first editions of Anatole France for $32."
"I shall not," he added, "in order to nauseate myself with bad food and live in mediocre squalor, enter a profession that will bore me to death. Unless I find a congenial occuaption, I prefer to destroy myself. Having been ruined as an artist, I am of no use to the world longer, so it does not matter."
All that he salvaged out of the wreckage was what he regarded as his greatest artistic achievement -- a screen thirty feet long and seven feet high. It represented fourteen months' work over a period of five years which Mr. Carstairs spent in Japan. It contained more than 45,000 separate pieces of gold in six shades set in mosaic. When it was exhibited at Knoedler's gallery in 1929 it was priced at $25,000, but at the auction sale it was tagged $500. Mr. Carstairs said the materials alone cost him $3,000.
Mr. Carstairs, whose father was an art patron, never knew want until this Summer. Most of his life was spent abroad, but he decided to make his home here just as the depression began to make itself felt. He bought a large duplex apartment at 322 East Fifty-seventh Street in May, 1930, and installed in it the furnishings which it had taken him a lifetime to collect. His income form investments dwindled, and at last vanished entirely. Since the auction sale, he told friends, he lived at times on 40 cents a day, and upon occasion went without food for periods of days.
He had been educated in private schools in America and had spent a year at Harvard, studied at Oxford and had spent years in study in Paris. For several years he lived in the Orient, painting and travelling. His work, mostly landscape painting, was thought of highly and usually sold well. In his own country, however, he received less notice, although occasionally a critic became enthusiastic over his work.
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The bookplate of James Stewart Carstairs
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From Carstairs' ill-fated library: a two-volume set of La Fontaine's Contes et Nouvelles en vers, (Bouillon, 1777).
This set is currently for sale at
Bonnefoi Livres Anciens
Henri Bonnefoi
1, Rue de Médicis
75006 PARIS
FRANCE
Tel. 01 46 33 57 22, Fax 01 43 54 05 43
E-mail: bonnefoi@club-internet.fr
Click here for a full description.
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Three waterscapes by James Stewart Carstairs
From the Private Collection of John Barrat
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