Henry G. Marquand,

1896

Among the most discerning collectors of his time, Henry Marquand amassed a fortune in railroads before serving for many years as a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, becoming one of its greatest patrons. Marquand also was a generous benefactor to Princeton University, as was his son, Allan, the institution’s first professor of art history, whose books formed the nucleus of its Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology. Society portraitist John White Alexander, who himself taught drawing at Princeton during the 1880s, depicted the elder Marquand as a discriminating man of culture, positioned with glasses in hand before a framed object. He holds what were likely intended to be recognized as plans for the Metropolitan’s signature central structure, undertaken during Marquand’s tenure as the museum’s second president. Alexander’s subtly elegant portrayal exemplifies the second stage in his artistic development, when he adopted an especially absorptive canvas and began using thinned pigment to give his work a flat, muted appearance that stands in marked contrast to his earlier bravura style, in which brushwork rather than compositional design served as the primary aesthetic vehicle.