The Art Collection of Henry Gurdon Marquand was a collection of antiques and paintings owned by Henry Gurdon Marquand, the second president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, until his death in 1902.
The Art Collection of Henry Gurdon Marquand was a collection of antiques and paintings owned by Henry Gurdon Marquand, the second president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, until his death in 1902.
In the late 1840s, after the sale of his family's jewelry business and store (which was renamed to Ball, Tompkins & Black), Marquand traveled to Europe where he met Henry Kirke Brown and other expatriate American sculptors in Rome. [1] While there, he "began to 'frequent studios' and "to understand the artists' 'hopes, aims, and aspirations.' There Marquand fell under the spell of what Henry James called 'the old and complex civilization.'" [1] He returned in 1852 with his new wife and spent a year in Rome, where the first of their six children was born. [1] In 1889, he became the second president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, [2] and made many significant gifts to the Metropolitan Museum, [3] [4] including works by Filippo Lippi, Lucas van Leyden, Frans Hals, Anthony van Dyck, Rembrandt, Diego Velázquez, Thomas Gainsborough, John Trumbull and John Singer Sargent. [5] [6]
Following his 1902 death, his collection exhibited at the American Art Galleries in New York before it was put up for auction. [7] [8] In conjunction with the January and February 1903 auction, [9] The American Art Association put out the Illustrated Catalogue of the Art and Literary Property Collected by the late Henry G. Marquand, edited by Thomas E. Kirby. In the foreword by art critic Russell Sturgis, he wrote: [10]
"He bought like an Italian price of the Renaissance. He collected for his own delight and for the enjoyment and instruction of his many friends. A noble Van Dyck portrait appealed to him, and so did a Persian vase. He was the most eager purchaser of a single newly found gem of antique art; he would chase the elusive thing with more energy than another, and therefore he secured the price. He felt also the impossibility of understanding a branch of art, or a special manufacture, or mode of design, without having many pieces to represent and explain it, and so he bought largely along some chosen lines." [10]
The sale of his collection brought $197,070 for 93 paintings (including A Reading from Homer by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema which sold for $30,300 [lower-alpha 1] ), [12] $22,637 for "255 vases, jars, dishes, bowls, beakers, incense burners, water-vases, wine cups, and writer's water jars", [13] and $234,564 for rugs and tapestries, including a 15th or early 16th-century Persian rug that brought $38,000. Another $117,000 was received for enamels, pottery, bronzes, tiles and intaglios. A single retable (altar piece) brought $26,000. [9] [lower-alpha 2]
 | This section contains an unencyclopedic or excessive gallery of images. |
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema was a Dutch painter who later settled in the United Kingdom, becoming the last officially recognised denizen in 1873. Born in Dronryp, the Netherlands, and trained at the Royal Academy of Antwerp, Belgium, he settled in London, England in 1870 and spent the rest of his life there.
Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Spanish Netherlands and Italy.
The Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, or simply the Thyssen, is an art museum in Madrid, Spain, located near the Prado Museum on one of the city's main boulevards. It is known as part of the "Golden Triangle of Art", which also includes the Prado and the Reina Sofía national galleries. The Thyssen-Bornemisza fills the historical gaps in its counterparts' collections: in the Prado's case this includes Italian primitives and works from the English, Dutch and German schools, while in the case of the Reina Sofía it concerns Impressionists, Expressionists, and European and American paintings from the 20th century.
Henry Gurdon Marquand was an American financier, philanthropist and art collector known for his extensive collection.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. It is estimated Rembrandt produced a total of about three hundred paintings, three hundred etchings, and two thousand drawings.
Spring is an 1894 oil-on-canvas painting by the Anglo-Dutch artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema, which has been in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California, since 1972. The painting relates the Victorian custom of children collecting flowers on May Day back to an Ancient Roman spring festival, perhaps Cerealia or Floralia or Ambarvalia, although the details depicted in the painting do not correspond to any single Roman festival. It was the inspiration for the scene of Julius Caesar's triumphal entry into Rome in the 1934 film Cleopatra.
The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp is a museum in Antwerp, Belgium, founded in 1810, that houses a collection of paintings, sculptures and drawings from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries. This collection is representative of the artistic production and the taste of art enthusiasts in Antwerp, Belgium and the Northern and Southern Netherlands since the 15th century.
The Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings in 1930 and 1931 resulted in the departure of some of the most valuable paintings from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad to Western museums. Several of the paintings had been in the Hermitage Collection since its creation by Empress Catherine the Great. About 250 paintings were sold, including masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphael, and other important artists. Andrew Mellon donated the twenty-one paintings he purchased from the Hermitage to the United States government in 1937, which became the nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Laura Theresa, Lady Alma-Tadema was a British painter specialising in domestic and genre scenes of women and children. Eighteen of her paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy. Her husband, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, was one of the most prominent Victorian painters.
Isabella Brant, a portrait drawing, was executed in Antwerp around 1621, by Flemish artist and diplomat, Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). Brant (1591–1626) was Rubens' first wife and modelled for some of his portraits until her untimely death in 1626. The portrait is drawn in black and red chalk with white heightening on brown wash paper.
Anna Alma-Tadema was a British artist and suffragette.
The Walpole collection was a collection of paintings and other works of art at Houghton Hall in Norfolk and at other residences of Sir Robert Walpole. Many of the important works were sold in 1779 to Catherine the Great of Russia, and the Hermitage Museum still owns more than 120 works from the collection.
Joseph Henri François Van Lerius was a Belgian painter in the Romantic-Historical style.
The Finding of Moses is a 1904 oil-on-canvas painting by the Anglo-Dutch artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema. It was one of his last major works before his death in 1912, but quickly fell out of favour; according to rumour, it was sold in the 1950s for its frame. After appreciation of Victorian painting was renewed towards the end of the 20th century, it was described in an auction catalogue in 1995 as "the undisputed masterpiece of [Alma-Tadema's] last decade, as well as a late flowering of the nineteenth-century's love-affair with Egypt". It was sold to a private collector at auction in 2010 for nearly US$36 million.
Arthur Tooth & Sons was an art gallery founded in London, England, in 1842 by Charles Tooth (1788–1868).
Arthur Joseph Sulley was a London-based art dealer best known for selling Dutch Old Master paintings, including the record-setting Rembrandt van Rijn's The Mill.
Portrait of a Man is a c. 1657 portrait painting painted by Rembrandt. It is an oil on canvas and is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The collection of twenty-eight British paintings in the Museo del Prado is one of only two significant collections of British art in Spain - the other is the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, a private collection influenced by the personal taste of Paula Florido, the wife of its founder José Lázaro Galdiano. There is little British art in the former Spanish royal collection due to the English and Scottish Reformations and the ensuing tensions between Spain, England and Scotland. The works entered the collection through both purchase and donation, two in the 1880s and the rest mostly in the 20th century other than two at the end of the 19th century.
A Reading from Homer is an oil-on-canvas painting executed in 1885 by the English artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema. It depicts an imaginary festival scene from ancient Greece with youth reading poetry to a small audience on a marble balcony overlooking the sea. The painting has been in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art since 1924.
Portrait of Mrs Wells, three-quarter-length, seated, in a striped dress and straw hat
