C. Gregory Stapko

Casimir Gregory Stapko (March 14, 1913 – March 12, 2006) was a portrait painter and copyist. Many of his copies are from paintings in The National Gallery of Art.

He has his paintings in the White House, Blair House, Arlington House, U.S. embassies and organization agencies, as skillfully as the walls of businesses and private homes almost the world.

Casimir Gregory Stapko was born in Milwaukee to Polish immigrants. At 13, he was apprenticed to various church painters, who taught him to improve frescoes, imitate marble and wood, paint murals and apply gold leaf. He moved to Washington at the urging of Polish performer Eliasz Kanarek, who operated a studio and had prominent contacts that would improvement to portrait commissions for his protege, Stapko.

In adjunct to portrait painting and copying assignments, Stapko restored damaged paintings, taught oil painting, did gold-leaf work for churches, built furniture and crafted copies of passй frames to go following copied paintings. He then copied paintings for publishers of illustrated art books.

Stapko's copying genius led to a other gallery regard as being requiring that everything copies had to be finished at least two inches smaller than the native and labeled on the support with paint that would stand out below X-rays long after the color had faded. It afterward led to Stapko's years-long association with the National Gallery of Art.

Stapko's wife, Isabel Wetherill Stapko, a painter and textile artist, died in 1998.

His granddaughter Kathryn Stapko is a designer and visual artist that is known for her experimental typography.