This following biography was researched, compiled, and written by Geoffrey K. Fleming, Executive Director, Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV.

LOUISE JOHNSON STARK (July 20, 1897 – January 11, 1975)

A.K.A. “Louise Emilie Johnson,” “Louise J. Rosensteil,” “Louise J. Roth”

Painter, teacher, interior decorator. Born “Louise Emilie Johnson” in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of Blanche Rosenfeld (1874 – 1948) and Samuel Joseph Johnson II (1864 – 1907). Her father was a prominent whiskey distiller and partner with the firm of Rheinstrom, Bettman, Johnson & Company. The family resided along fashionable Glenwood Avenue in Cincinnati.  Following her father’s premature death in 1907, Louise Johnson became an heiress.

Stark attended Vassar College from 1915-17 but never graduated, while there she studied among other subjects, art. On November 18, 1917, she was married to Dr. John Reis Stark (1893 – 1949).  Following her marriage, she became a volunteer instructor and co-leader at the Cincinnati School for Crippled Children with “The Opportunity Department,” where she worked on art projects with the younger children, helping them to “…make and paint attractive wooden articles” in addition to other artistic endeavors. Stark also studied additionally at the University of Cincinnati.

Along with her husband, she was appointed in 1928 to the first ‘Citizen’s Committee’ of the Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts. The group was organized to be broad in background and according to newspaper accounts would be consulted from time to time on important matters “…relating to the artistic future of the city.” During the late 1940s she worked for and later served as the President of the decorating firm, Greenwich House.

During her marriage she and her husband were very supportive of Jewish charities throughout the greater Cincinnati area, including the Jewish Hospital Building Fund. Following his death, Louise Stark eventually became one of the volunteer staff of the two hospital gift shops. In addition, she was a member and supporter of The Contemporary Arts Center, serving as chairman of some of their events during the 1950s.

Stark remarried in 1951 to Cincinnati businessman Lewis S. Rosensteil (1891 – 1976) and they made their home in Greenwich, Connecticut for about a year before the marriage ended in divorce. Stark came back to Cincinnati, where she returned to her as a decorator. Her newly redecorated home was the feature of the article “Decorator’s Home Has Wide Appeal,” which was published in The Cincinnati Post on January 26, 1954. Stark married for a third and final time in 1955 to Frederick H. Roth (1899 – 1970) and made her home in Reading, northeast of Cincinnati.

Louise Johnson Stark died in Cincinnati on Saturday, the 11th day of January 1975 at the age of seventy-seven years. Her service was handled by the Weil Funeral Home, and she was interred next to her first husband in the Walnut Hills Cemetery of the Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati, the same cemetery where her parents were buried decades earlier. The Louise J. Roth Fund of Interior Design at the University of Cincinnati is named in her honor.

As a painter, very little is known about her work. She was painting early on during her adult life and may have been part of the Women’s Art Club of Cincinnati at some point. Her known works are impressionist in style, with a rich impasto, and are sometimes dated and signed with the monogram “LJS” (Louise Johnson Stark). At least one work is dated to 1927.

Though are no exhibitions in which Stark is known to have participated, and her works are not known to be held in the collection of any public institutions. The majority of her works reside in private collections throughout the United States.