Stark was a major American Impressionist. He was one of the Hoosier Group or Hoosier Five, along with T.C. Steele, Richard Gruelle, William Forsyth and J. Ottis Adams. He was a native of Indianapolis, Indiana, and studied in Cincinnati, Ohio, New York City and Paris, France. He showed at the Paris Salon, in New York, at the Denison Hotel exhibit in Chicago, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Upon returning to Indiana in the 1890s, he exhibited and was a very influential teacher. After World War I, he devoted his full attention to painting, often working with Adams, a close friend.