Henry Gurdon Marquand (1819-1902)

He was born in New York City to a family of prominent jewellers and silversmiths. He briefly worked for the family firm but preferred to pursue his own business interests. In partnership with his brother, Frederick, he purchased the St. Louis & Iron Mountain Railroad and served as its president from 1881 before it was wrested away by Jay Gould and merged with the Missouri Pacific Railroad of which he became a director. He began collecting art in his twenties and in 1869 he became one of the fifty co-founders of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Having served as the museum's trustee and treasurer, he succeeded James Taylor Johnston to become its second president in 1889, marked by a gift of thirty-seven Old Masters by the likes of Gainsborough, Reynolds, Romney, Raeburn, etc. and, "some of the finest Van Dycks in the United States". Although many of his paintings were later reattributed to lesser artists, his acquisitions set a standard and put The Met on a path to becoming a world-class museum. He also endowed Princeton University with the money to build a chapel and a library.

He lived between his French Renaissance mansion (see images) on the northwest corner of Madison Avenue and 68th Street in New York City, and his summer home, "Linden Gate," in Newport, R.I., both of which were designed by Richard Morris Hunt. Although outwardly austere, Princeton Lecturer Nathaniel Burt remarked that he bought art, “like an Italian Prince of the Renaissance” and both his homes were built specifically to house his 2,400-piece collection of European, Japanese, Chinese, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Middle Eastern art. For example, his townhouse - with a bronze fountain, mosaic walls and windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany - incorporated an interior, sky-lit three-story courtyard, a Moorish Smoking Room, a Japanese Morning Room with embroidered silk walls, a 16th century English Dining Room hung with Flemish tapestries, and a Music Room in the Greek style of which the centerpiece was the Steinway Grand Piano (Model D Pianoforte) designed by Alma-Tadema and now at The Clark Institute. In 1891, Alfred Trumble of The Collector magazine proclaimed him, "the greatest collector in America, because he collects not for himself alone, but for a whole people and for all the world." After his death, his collection was sold at auction in New York, netting circa $500,000.

In 1851, he married Elizabeth Love Allen, daughter of Massachusetts State Senator Jonathan Allen. They were the parents of six children, notably Allan Marquand, Professor of Art and Archeology at Princeton who with Charles Elliot Norton was the first to introduce the serious study of art into the curriculum of American colleges.