A rustic Stony Point, NY, property owned for decades by the legendary artist Jasper Johns, 93, listed for $600,000 in May — and has already been yanked off the market as the seller “re-adjusts” the price due to demand, a source tells Gimme Shelter.
Johns, widely considered to be America’s greatest living artist, was inspired by the area and quietly lived there in the 1970s and 1980s.
He is believed to have bought the property for $48,000 in 1973 — about $354,000 today — and sold it in 1995, according to sources.
Johns now lives between his 170-acre estate in Sharon, Conn., and the Caribbean island of Saint Martin.
The home, at 160 W. Main St., was built in the 1930s. Perched on a slope overlooking Cedar Pond Brook, it sits on close to 1.3 wooded acres. The property is surrounded by charming stone walls and terraced gardens.
The wood-shingled, two-story main house — a converted barn — is around 2,100 square feet and also features Johns’ former studio. The two bedrooms, bathroom and studio are on the main level, while the kitchen, dining room and living room are on the lower level. Johns expanded the home by adding four floor-to-ceiling glass garage doors, and two of them open the space to the outdoors.
The original portion of the home was a converted barn with preserved beams, barn board walls, wide-plank and tile floors. There’s also a gas fireplace, built-in shelves, window banks, a wooden deck and a gravel terrace with a fire pit.
The property additionally includes a separate studio with a bathroom, a kitchenette and a detached wooden garage where Johns may also have once worked.
Johns — a painter, sculptor and print maker — put his own stamp on American culture ever since his first solo exhibit in 1958 at the Leo Castelli Gallery when he was 28 years old. Known for his work depicting the American flag, targets and numerals — “things the mind already knows,” in his words — Johns is a leader in everything from abstract expressionism to pop art and neo-Dada, and his art is in major collections including at the Whitney and MoMA.
The seller is the journalist and author Stephanie Gutmann, who bought the property in 2013 for $380,000 with her now late husband, the journalist and author William Tucker. Tucker was a New York Post columnist whose work also appeared in Harper’s, the Atlantic, the American Spectator and the New Republic.
The listing brokers are Jacob P. Matthews and Jody Atkinson of Nyack, NY-based Ellis Sotheby’s International Realty.
