Martha Codman Karolik

Martha Catherine Codman Karolik (July 24, 1858 – April 21, 1948) was a philanthropist and American art collector based in Newport, Rhode Island. In 1939 and 1947 she and her husband Maxim Karolik donated two major collections of early American furniture, paintings, and prints and drawings to the Boston Fine Arts Museum, which built a new wing to house it. While the couple had purchased many of the nineteenth-century paintings and other works of their 1947 donation, much of the first collection donated in 1939 consisted of works she had inherited, which were collected by family and colonial ancestors. Biography Martha Catherine Codman was born on July 24, 1858, in a family whose wealth was built largely from the Russian and China clipper trade. She was the only surviving child of John Amory Codman (1824–1886) and Martha Pickman Rogers (1829–1905). She grew up in Newport, Rhode Island, and Boston. She was the great-great-granddaughter of merchant Elias Hasket Derby, considered America's first millionaire. In 1923 she published the journal of her ancestor, Catherine Willard, as Journal of Mrs. John Amory. In 1907, she commissioned her cousin Ogden Codman Jr. to build a private house in Washington, DC; it was later known as the Codman–Davis House. He took inspiration from the Château de Voisins, Louveciennes, Seine et Oise. She also commissioned him to build nearby supporting structures of stables and apartments, known as the Codman Carriage House and Stable. In 1928 at the age of 69, Codman married Maxim Karolik, a much younger Russian opera singer. Martha Codman Karolik sold her Washington, DC house in 1938, during the Great Depression. In 1995 the Codman-Davis House was serving as the official residence of the Ambassador of Thailand, and it is one of the few intact homes designed by Ogden Codman Jr. He also designed the Codman Carriage House and Stable, which later served variously as a store, nightclub, and office space.