Franklin Feldman

LAKEVILLE — Franklin Feldman, 93, of New York and Lakeville died peacefully at home on Jan. 15, 2021. 

Franklin was born in 1927 in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. He attended the High School of Music and Art, where he developed a passion for drawing and painting. 

In his spare time he provided cover illustrations for basketball games at Madison Square Garden. 

He went to college at New York University’s uptown campus in the Bronx, and then Columbia Law School, where he was editor of the Law Review. 

After law school, he joined the Air Force as a Pentagon lawyer, eventually rising to the rank of 1st Lieutenant. After leaving the Air Force he worked as a lawyer in the office of New York  Gov. Thomas Dewey. 

In 1955 he joined the law firm Stroock, Stroock and Lavan, where he practiced corporate law until his retirement in 1989. 

In the 1970s he merged his interest in art with his expertise in the law, and in 1974 (with Stephen Weil) published the landmark volume “Art Law,” which became a standard reference in the field; a revised edition was awarded the Scribes award for best law book of 1987. 

For many years he taught courses at Columbia Law School on the law and visual arts. 

After his retirement, he took up art full-time and produced numerous works in an endless variety of media, including paintings, etchings, lithographs, woodcuts and sculpture. 

For several decades he ran the Indian Mountain Press out of his summer home in Lake-
ville. 

Several of his artworks are housed in the collections of major museums and libraries, including the Beinecke Library at Yale, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum. 

He and his wife, Naomi (née Goldstein), were married for 64 years, and shared a lifelong devotion to each other, their family and their passion for art and creativity. 

He will be remembered for his warmth, wisdom and lively sense of humor, which left a deep impression on everyone he knew. 

He is survived by his wife, Naomi; his children, Sarah, Eve, and Jacob Feldman; his son-in-law, David Scharfstein; his daughter-in-law, Karin Stromswold; and his grandchildren, Rebecca, Ben and Eliza Scharfstein and Hannah and Sophie Feldman.