Alexander E. Orr (1831-1914)

Albert H. Munsell (1858-1918)
Oil on canvas, 1903
Gift of the Partnership for New York City, Inc.
NYSM 2003.41.4

Born in Ireland of Ulster Scot ancestry, Alexander Ector Orr immigrated to New York City about 1851. He joined the firm of David Dows and Co., the nation’s largest grain dealer, and subsequently married the boss’s daughter. By the late 1880s, Orr was head of the New York Produce exchange. Prominent in New York’s world of high finance, he is best known, as President of the Transit Commission, for arranging the financing and construction of the city’s subway system at the turn of the twentieth century.

Albert Henry Munsell married well, too: Orr was his father-in-law. As a painter, Munsell was noted for seascapes and portraiture, but he is most famous for inventing the Munsell Color System, a numerically based rationale for describing colors. He wrote two books about it: A Color Notation (1905) and Atlas of the Munsell Color System (1915). The Munsell color order system is internationally accepted as the foundation for many other color order systems. In 1917 he founded the Munsell Color Company, which formed the Munsell Color Foundation in 1942. The foundation’s activities ultimately led to the establishment of the Munsell Color Science Laboratory at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1983.