Background
Henry Marquand was born on April 11, 1819, in New York City. The second youngest of the 11 children of Isaac and Mabel Perry Marquand.
Financier philanthropist collector
Henry Marquand was born on April 11, 1819, in New York City. The second youngest of the 11 children of Isaac and Mabel Perry Marquand.
His family owned a successful jewelry business, Marquand and Company, in New York City, where he started working at the age of fifteen. Marquand’s older brother sold the company after the death of their father and used the proceeds to invest in real estate and financial ventures. Starting as his brother’s assistant, Marquand established himself as a Wall Street banker and later became a railroad executive. Largely retired from business by 1880, Marquand set out to become an art collector.
Marquand had started collecting art in his twenties when he made the acquaintance of painters Henry Kirke Brown (1814–1866) and George Henry Boughton (1833–1905). In November 1869, Marquand became a member of the provisional committee formed to establish a museum of art in New York City. The resulting Metropolitan Museum of Art was incorporated in 1870 and opened to the public two years later. Marquand initially served as a trustee and treasurer and later became the museum’s second president. Under his direction, the Metropolitan acquired a world-class collection of art. Many of the museum’s earliest acquisitions of Old Master, French, and Italian paintings were gifts of Marquand. His homes in Newport, Rhode Island, and New York City were built by architect Richard Morris Hunt (1827–1895) and were well documented in the leading design publications of the day.
Henry Gurdon Marquand died on February 26, 1902.
Henry Gurdon Marquand was a member for the Grolier, National Arts, the Sculpture Society and Century Clubs.
On May 20, 1851, Henry Gurdon Marquand married Elizabeth Love Allen, they had a son.
Allan Marquand was an art historian at Princeton University and a curator of the Princeton University Art Museum.
