Sarah Campbell Blaffer, 1885-1975

Sarah Campbell Blaffer and the Foundation

The art collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation is the result of the generosity of Sarah Campbell Blaffer (1885-1975). Born in Waxahachie, Texas, Mrs. Blaffer's youth was spent in Lampasas and Houston. As a student in Boston, she visited the Isabella Stewart Garner Museum at Fenway Court, but it was only on her wedding trip to Paris in 1909, when she dutifully visited the Louvre, that she had her first mature contact with great works of art. The experience, as she recalled later, was overwhelming and transformed her whole life. She became a connoisseur and an avid collector at a time when few people in Texas shared her understanding and love for art. Her philanthropies were largely devoted to encouraging a similar appreciation among her fellow citizens.

Later in life, Mr. Blaffer developed a desire to share the beauty of great works of art with people in communities far away from major museums where such works were not available for viewing. She had the firm belief that this would enrich their lives, as it had enriched her own. After her death in 1975, the Trustees of the Foundation she created assembled a collection of paintings for public exhibition that would illustrate the development of European art from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. It includes works by such artists as Rubens, Van Dyck, Tintoretto, Veronese, Chardin, and Gainsborough. The Foundation collection also includes extensive sets of prints by Hogarth and Goya, as well as a few early twentieth-century paintings. Foundation works have been exhibited widely throughout Texas, as well as nationally and internationally.

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