OSCAR B. CINTAS (1887 - 1957) (click to go back to the main page)

Oscar B. Cintas was the Cuban ambassador to Washington from 1932 to 1934 when the Platt Amendment was abrogated. The Platt Amendment (1901) had practically made Cuba an American protectorate. In the 1930's Oscar Cintas was one of the wealthiest men in Cuba. He was director of the Cuban Railroad Company's sugar mills in Punte Allegre, Jatibonico and Jobabo. He was also president of Railroad Equipment of Brazil and Argentina. He had been a director of the American Car and Foundry and the American Locomotive Sales Corporation and he had interests in subsidiary companies in the USA, South America and Europe.
Oscar B. Cintas was born in1887 in Cuba at Sangua la Grande, also known as La Villa del Undoso, in the Villa Clara province. Sangua la Grande’s origins date back to the 17th century.  It became a road and rail hub functioning as the commercial center for the surrounding area, where sugarcane and cattle were raised.
Oscar B. Cintas was educated in England.  He came to the USA for the first time in 1909, he was 22.  He sailed from Havana to New York on a ship named Havana, built in 1898 in Philadelphia, PA for the New York & Cuba Steamship Co.  Steamers’ passengers records show that he landed in New York ten times from the age of 22 to 36,
Oscar Cintas was an eclectic art collector of ancient and modern paintings. Among others, he owned, two Rembrandts, Portrait of a Young Girl, said to be Hendrickje Stoffels and Portrait of a Rabbi.  Both were shown at the Masterpieces of Art exhibition at the 1940 New York World's Fair.  In April 1949 at a Parke-Bernet Galleries public auction, he purchased the fifth and final manuscript of the Gettysburg address, the Bliss copy, for $54,000, a high price at the time.  Life magazine of May 16, 1949 illustrated this great moment under the title Happy Bibliophile.  Pretending to slumber Señor Cintas had an agent buy the manuscript for him.  Later he willed the Gettysburg Address to the American people provided it would stay in the White House, where it was kept unseen in storage until 2008. Then, in commemoration of Abraham Lincoln two hundredth birthday it was exhibited in Washington DC at the National Museum of American History from November 21, 2008, to January 4, 2009.  Oscar Cintas also owned the earliest portrait of Abraham Lincoln, which was given to the Chicago Historical Society.
After a brief illness, Oscar Cintas died at home in Cuba on May 11,1957. He was 70 years old.  Señor Cintas had been a widower for several years. His wife Graziella died on December 27, 1941 at age 37.  She died only a week after an operation at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. Señora Graziella Cintas was a daughter of the late Colonel José Miguel Tarafa of Havana, a leading Cuban engineer.  Oscar Cintas and his wife had no children, never remarried.
The part of his art collection in the USA was left with the Brooklyn Museum on long-term loan.  These paintings and deposits in New York banks and shares of stock, were willed to the Cintas Foundation to support Cuban artists, not necessarily born in Cuba.  The paintings from the collection of the late Oscar B. Cintas were sold at two public auctions, at Parke-Bernet Galeries on May 1st, 1963 and Sotheby July 3rd 1963.  The second auction had mostly Spanish paintings like El Greco’s Feast in the House of Simon and Goya’s Marqués de Caballero.

Pierre F. Cintas – Pennsylvania State University - February 2009

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