Part 3 - Success After Death

Troubled by the death of his parents and younger brother, the loss of a multimillion dollar fortune by his father, and having recovered from a breakdown, Justin McCarthy tried various jobs to earn a living, but always painted. He began exhibiting his paintings but rarely sold any.

In 1962, Sterling and Dorothy Strauser met then 71-year-old Justin McCarthy at a Stroudsburg art fair and discovered him.“I noticed first his ancient auto decorated with paintings of tigers, roses, lions and chrysanthemums, and then I found his paintings. No display racks, no clothes line, no easels, just the paintings thrown helter skelter on the grass of the courthouse lawn,” said Dorothy Strauser.

The Strausers, who were at the fair showing their own work, became patrons of McCarthy. They helped him place his paintings in major exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the American Museum of Folk Art in New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

In March 1972, Justin sold the Mansion and its 30-acres of land to American Legion Post 360 for $25,000, and moved to Beaver Meadows. Now in his 80s, Justin was having breathing problems and was advised by his doctor to move to Arizona. He moved to Tucson, where he died in 1977.

The American Legion ripped out the murals of John McCarthy, tore out the stage from the third floor, and gutted the building. The outside, they let fall into disrepair. When the porticos required maintenance, they tore them down. By 1984, the Mansion, now a shell of its former grandeur, was up for sale by the Legion.

Arnold Rinker, a Weatherly stump excavator and a neighbor familiar with the mansion, stopped by while the Century 21 saleswoman was negotiating with two men from New York City to purchase the Mansion. The saleswoman told him that they were ready to make an offer to buy it and tear it down. The American Legion was asking $60,000.

Rinker fearing the historic building would be destroyed, immediately made an offer and wrote a check for $500 as a binder. "I didn't even have that much money in the account," he said. After negotiations, the property sold for $45,000.

Arnold and Linda has been living there for over 20 years and it has been a money pit—costly to heat, insure and repair. Yet, they love the property and are always discovering something new—although nothing remains of the artwork of either John or Justin McCarthy.

Justin never married and had no heirs. Casper Musselman, Justin McCarthy's cousin on his mother's side of the family, helped settle the estate. Musselman visited Rinker at the Mansion. He told Rinker the family stories and gave him two paintings: one signed, of a turkey. A second, unsigned, shows horses racing—typical of several of Justin's paintings that depict scenes when his father raced horses on the estate.

Musselman also helped create a Justin McCarthy Estate Award—Savings Bonds to winners of a Primitive Art contest in the Weatherly School system.

Since Justin McCarthy's death in 1977, he is slowly being discovered posthumously. The Allentown Art Museum had an exhibition in 1985.

There have been exhibitions of Justin McCarthy paintings at: the Museum of Modern Art and the American Museum of Folk Art in New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Galerie Bonheur in St. Louis, and at the Noyes
Museum of Art in New Jersey.

The paintings of Justin McCarthy of Weatherly are concluding a major exhibition at the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts in Reading. "Justin McCarthy is able to visually contribute a sense of motion and activity with a child-like wonder," said Diane LaBelle: Executive Director at GoggleWorks, a five-year old arts center formerly the site of a manufacturer of safety goggles founded as Thomas A. Willson & Co. in 1871.

During his lifetime, he was unable to sell a painting for $5. Now, 30 years after his death, his paintings start at $3,000.