Allinson, Francis Greenleaf (1856-1931)
Role: Professor of Classical PhilologyDates: 1895-1928
Portrait Location: MacFarlane 102
Artist: Frazier, John R. (1889-1966)
Portrait Date: 1931
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 33 1/4
Framed Dimensions: 41
Brown Portrait Number: 127
Brown Historical Property Number: 345
Francis Greenleaf Allinson, a native of New Jersey, inspired Francis Greenleaf Whittier to write the poem "My Namesake." Allinson's father, a friend of Whittier, had named his son after the great American poet.Allinson graduated from Haverford and Harvard, and earned his doctoral degree at Johns Hopkins. Before beginning his career as associate professor of Greek at Brown in 1895, Allinson taught at Haverford, the University School in Baltimore and Williams College. Three years after his arrival at Brown, he became professor of classical philology. In 1905, he married Dean Anne Crosby Emery of Pembroke College, with whom he co-wrote Greek Lands and Letters (1909). His service to teaching and to the profession ranges from publications to appointments at the American School in Athens (1910-11) and at the University of California (1917), to president of the American Philological Association (1922-23). Allinson retired in 1928; he died in 1931. President Faunce eulogized him as "endowed with 'an intellectual delicacy unsurpassed by any Greek scholar in America.'"
Allinson's likeness was executed in 1931 by John Robinson Frazier, a Providence artist who trained at the Rhode Island School of Design. He subsequently became a painting instructor at RISD, where in time he concluded a long and distinguished career as chairman of the Department of Painting. Frazier was president of the Providence Art Club from 1945 to 1947. He painted four portraits now hanging at Brown, and in 1957, he was awarded an honorary fine arts degree from the university.