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Her friends, unable to make her stop this pathetic exchange of treasure for indulgence, settled for finding local buyers who would pay high prices. The chief crusader, Mrs. Walter Haas, wife of the chairman of Levi Strauss & Co., bought Woman with a Hat for $20,000. Sarah, with growing compulsion, let the paintings go. When she died in 1953, so disturbed that she could not even stand the sight of her few remaining paintings, almost the entire collection had been scattered through the U.S.
In the years since, Mrs. Haas and a friend have bought portraits that Matisse did of Sarah and Michael and donated them to the San Francisco museum. When she heard that the Matisse show was coming to town, she persuaded the museum to track down as many Stein paintings as it could for a special exhibition that might persuade the city to buy the collection back. It was a gallant, if unrealistic hope —and a tribute to Sarah, who had. as Matisse said shortly before she died, "so often sustained me."