Peter Marié

Peter Marié ( – January 13, 1903) was an American socialite, philanthropist, and collector of rare books and miniatures from New York City. He commissioned nearly 300 miniature portraits of Gilded Age socialites.

Early life Peter Marié was born in France in 1826. He was the fourth son in a family of nine children born to John Baptiste Marié (d. 1835), a ship merchant who traded with Mexico, who married in 1811. His paternal grandfather was a merchant from Cap Français, also in Santo Domingo. Upon his retirement, Marié, "a man of cultivated tastes who inherited a sufficient fortune to indulge them at a comparatively early age," became a socialite in New York.

Miniature portraits Marié commissioned up to 300 miniature portraits of female socialites, many by Fernand Paillet, of the Gilded Age. These included Edith Minturn Stokes, Hope Goddard Iselin, Emeline Winthrop, Emily Post, Frances Cleveland, Maude Adams, Anna Hall Roosevelt, and many others. A collector of rare books, he also self-published Book of Beauty, a book featuring some miniatures of Gilded Age socialites. However, his collection was acquired by the New-York Historical Society in 1905. More recently, it was exhibited at the New-York Historical Society from November 11, 2011, to September 9, 2012.

He died on January 13, 1903, at his residence, 6 East 37th Street, in Manhattan.

Society life In February 1892, Marié was included in Ward McAllister's "Four Hundred", purported to be an index of New York's best families, published in The New York Times. Conveniently, 400 was the number of people that could fit into Mrs. Astor's ballroom.

He first joined the Union Club of the City of New York, a private members' club in Manhattan, as early as 1854. He subsequently joined the Knickerbocker Club, the Grolier Club, the City Club of New York, the Tuxedo Club, and the Gridiron Club. Additionally, he was a member of the American Geographical Society, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the American Fine Arts Society. He made charitable contributions to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design and the American Museum of Natural History. He served as the Vice President of the New York Institute for the Blind. He also donated to Catholic outreach to the poor in New York City, but did not publicize his goodwill.