“It was Carol—who had faith in me as I started my business career—who first asked ‘When you make it, can we start collecting art?’” reflects collector Terry Wall speaking about the beginning of one of the most important collections of American Impressionism still in private hands. That simple request from his wife began what would become a decades long endeavor resulting in a collection that, in addition to seminal works by John Singer Sargent, contains inspiring works by William Merritt Chase, Mary Cassatt, John White Alexander, and Childe Hassam. Passionate collectors from the outset, the Walls generously loaned works from their collection to museums and institutions all over the world, determined to share their love of American Impressionism with as many people as possible.

Growing up in Baltimore and a farming community in rural Pennsylvania, the highly successful entrepreneur and businessman Terry Wall did not have much exposure to art. After high school, he intended to pursue a career as a doctor, but changed course after realizing he wouldn’t achieve the straight A grades needed for his pre-med courses. Instead, he graduated from the University of Maryland with a Bachelor of Science degree, before embarking on a career as a pharmaceutical salesman. After several years working in the field, Wall moved to a medical devices company, but soon realized that he didn’t want a prolonged career in sales. Building on his experience in both industries, and his own innate inventiveness, he decided to start his own company.

Vital Signs was founded in 1972 and Wall served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer until he sold the company to GE in a major deal in 2008. Under his leadership the company grew to become a global provider of medical products in a wide range of care areas such as anesthesia, respiratory, sleep therapy and emergency medicine. They pioneered the development of innovative single-use products which offered medical professionals significant cost advantages and also improved patient care. In 2007, Forbes named Vital Signs as one of the 200 Best Small Companies in America.  

Carol and Terry met when he recruited her to work at Vital Signs. Having worked for himself for a time, he realized that he needed someone who could help him take his business to the next level. “She was good at everything,” he recalled. In addition to helping him build his business, she also encouraged him to start their nascent art collection. “She was very knowledgeable and possessed a good eye,” he remembers fondly, and from the beginning the couple’s collection was very much a joint endeavor.  “From very early on, we both had to really love a painting in order to acquire it. If she liked it, but I didn’t love it, we didn’t get it, and vice versa. That happened a couple of times,” Wall says. As a result of this committee process, and also consulting with seasoned advisors, the Walls assembled a collection centered not on quantity, but rather on a focused selection of impeccable quality and importance.

Having realized early on that the European artists whose work they admired were already out of their reach, the couple turned to American Impressionism and the collection began with a painting by John White Alexander, the American portraitist celebrated for his studies of female figures gracefully posed in elegant interiors. But soon the Walls fell in love with the work of John Singer Sargent. The haunting Capri stands as one of Wall’s favorite Sargent paintings: “it’s the sense of freedom portrayed by the dancer on the rooftop,” he says, “it’s liberating.” Another of his favorites is Sargent’s Corner of the Church of Stae, Venice (1913). Wall recalls a trip that he and Carol took to Venice to see the church captured by Sargent. When they finally found it, Wall admitted that he was disappointed seeing it in person and wondered why Sargent had chosen it. But it was only when he replicated the particular angle that Sargent chose, that he fully appreciated the artist’s genius. “It was only when I got down on the stone steps close to the water that I realized what Sargent had achieved,” he recalls. “He captured only what a great artist could. The angle, the patch of blue sky, the shadows on the stonework. I’m sure tourists have walked past this church a million times and not seen what Sargent saw.”

Indeed, as exemplified by the works in the Wall’s collection, Sargent saw the world with a particular and special perspective focused on light. Likewise, the other Impressionists represented across the collection are united by an essential pursuit of light, whether experienced in a brilliant garden at Giverny like Frieseke, on the rainy streets of New York like Hassam, or in a glowing interior space like Alexander, Bunker and Chase.

Throughout their collection journey, Carol and Terry Wall have been generous in sharing their collection with the wider public. The couple have been supporters of many exhibitions featuring artists in their collection, lending works to museum and institutional shows all over the world. “It began with something my father once told me,” he said. “He reminded me that we never really own objects, they’re not really ours. You’re only a custodian of it for future generations. Sharing these works is really important to me, and fortunately Carol felt the same way.”