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John White Alexander
"Tired" John White Alexander, Portrait in Interior, American Impressionist

circa 1910

About the Item

John White Alexander Tired, circa 1910 Inscribed on the reverse: Mrs Lee Bauer, _____, Inscribed on the reverse: "Tired" Watercolor on paper 16 1/2 x 13 inches John White Alexander was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania and orphaned at an early age. “He was raised by his grandparents and later adopted by Edward Jay Allen, president of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company, where young Alexander worked from the age of twelve. In 1875, he went to New York and worked as a cartoonist for Harper's Weekly. In the summer of 1877 he sailed for Europe, where he enrolled in the Royal Academy in Munich and studied under Julius Benczur. From 1878 until his return in 1881, Alexander worked with Frank Duveneck and a group of American students, first in the Bavarian village of Polling and later in Florence and Venice. The landscapes and unpretentious portraits of local people that he painted in Polling owe a great deal to the impasto techniques that Duveneck developed under the influence of the German realist Wilhelm Leibl. In Venice, however, Alexander met James McNeil Whistler, whose delicate brushwork and thin paint surfaces he adopted. Over the next two decades the artists became close friends. “On his return to New York, Alexander again did illustrations for Harper's and painted a number of portraits. He went West in 1883 to sketch and paint watercolors. The next year, after a sketching tour of North Africa, he visited Spain to study the paintings of Velazquez in Madrid. In London in 1886 he did a series of portraits of famous Americans living abroad, among which is a charcoal drawing of Whistler [Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]. Returning home the following year he married Elizabeth Alexander, a writer whose short stories he later illustrated. In 1891 they settled in Paris, and for the next decade, Alexander was a prominent member of the international community there. His circle of friends included Octave Mirabeau, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Auguste Rodin, and Whistler, all of whom made this a period of great stimulation for him. “Throughout the 1890s, Alexander's paintings show Whistler's influence in the manipulation of line and color to enhance expressive qualities. He exhibited a group of his interpretive figure studies at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1893 and thereafter contributed his work to many exhibitions, not only in Paris, but with secession groups in Munich and Vienna. Perhaps the most fully developed example of his Parisian style is Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1897 [Museum of Fine Arts, Boston], in which he combines sensuous flowing lines and harsh theatrical lighting to create an image not unlike those of the symbolists. “In Paris, Alexander maintained contact with developments in America, serving as head of the jury to select works for the 1897 Carnegie International Exhibition. On his return to New York in 1901, he was elected to the National Academy of Design, where he became an academician the following year. He was commissioned in 1905 to execute an ambitious mural depicting The Apotheosis of Pittsburgh for the staircase hall of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, but the project remained unfinished at his death. Throughout this period, Alexander’s portraits and figure studies continue to show the influence of his Parisian experiments… Between 1909 and his death in 1915, Aexander was president of the National Academy and an ex-officio trustee of the Metropolitan Museum.”
  • Creator:
    John White Alexander (1856-1915, American)
  • Creation Year:
    circa 1910
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 16.5 in (41.91 cm)Width: 13 in (33.02 cm)
  • More Editions & Sizes:
    Unique workPrice: $9,500
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Framing:
    Framing Options Available
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    New York, NY
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU1841214451532

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