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Robert Sterling Clark was born in New York City on June 25, 1877, the son of Alfred Corning Clark and Elizabeth Scriven Clark. An heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune—his grandfather had been Isaac Singer’s business partner—Clark had a lively interest in art collecting cultivated by his father.
In 1899, Clark graduated from Yale University’s Sheffield Scientific School with a degree in engineering. He then entered the United States Army, which sent him to the Philippines and later to China. Clark settled in Paris in 1910 where he met and, in 1919 married, Francine Clary.
Clary was born in 1876 in France. A former actress with the Comédie Française, she shared with her husband an avid interest in collecting art. Sterling referred to his wife as his “touchstone in judging pictures.” He once described Francine as “an excellent judge, much better than I am at times, though I have known her to make mistakes on account of charming subjects.”