A Paris Life, A Baltimore Treasure: the Remarkable Lives of George A. Lucas and His Art Collection
Stanley Mazaroff, art historian

Stanley Mazaroff is a retired lawyer and art historian. Recognized annually in The Best Lawyers in America, Mazaroff retired early from his law firm to enroll in the art history department of Johns Hopkins University. Mazaroff is the author of Henry Walters and Bernard Berenson, Collector and Connoisseur, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 2010. His newest book, A Paris Life, A Baltimore Treasure (also published by the JHUP) has been praised by Doreen Bolger, former director of the BMA, Julia Marciari-Alexander, the director of the Walters Art Museum, and a host of curators and scholars.

A Paris Life, A Baltimore Treasure tells the fascinating story of George Lucas, a young man born and raised in Baltimore in the early 1800s, who after arriving in Paris in 1857 became the most important American art-agent for the most prominent and wealthy American art collectors of that time such as William Walters and William Vanderbilt, and how in the process he acquired a massive and incomparable personal collection of 18,000 works of French art and art-related information. The book further recounts the struggle he faced in finding a future home for his collection, the factors that influenced him to leave it to MICA and the battle that was fought in and out of court in the 1990s between MICA, the BMA and the Walters over ownership of the collection, resulting in the collection being glorified as a "Baltimore Treasure" which was forever saved for the people of Baltimore.   

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