Henry G. Marquand

In February 1896 the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum voted to have their own president painted. Henry Marquand had made his money in railroads, banking and New York real estate, and from 1880 he spent it on art for the museum, including the Vermeer he gave it in 1889, the first to enter an American museum.

Sargent did the work in his London studio in the summer of 1897. Marquand was 78 and in poor health, and he had crossed the Atlantic to sit for it.

The picture came to New York that same year as a gift from the trustees. Marquand stayed president until he died in 1902, and the museum he had been furnishing for two decades has kept it ever since.