Allan Marquand

What especially impressed the friends and associates of Allan Marquand was his mental immaculateness—which corresponded to his outward physical immaculateness—; a modesty which actually strove to avoid recognition of his life-long benefactions; such extraordinary singleness of purpose that one may regard his whole effort as devoted to the history of art and, finally, a heroic fidelity to personal research in the face of chronic invalidism. He was of the finest personal fibre, with a certain shyness and self-effacement but sure of his aims and standards, which indeed in all his work tended to become clearer and finer as time went on, simply because of his example.

Of Professor Marquand’s work as one of the pioneers in the historical teaching of art and archæology in the American college curriculum, Princeton University has given abundant recognition. He taught during nearly twenty consecutive years in that institution, in which one of his associates has described him as “perhaps the most universally beloved member of the Faculty.” To his fellow-Centurions, not the least interesting aspect of Marquand’s career is that it should so fittingly have supplemented the rare artistic instinct of that notable collector and benefactor, his father [Henry G. Marquand]—an old-time member of this Club and the founder of the Metropolitan Museum.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1925 Century Association Yearbook