John Alexander

John White Alexander (October 7, 1856 – May 31, 1915) was an American portrait, figure, and decorative painter and illustrator.

Early life and training

John White Alexander was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, now a part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 7, 1856. Orphaned in infancy, he was reared by his grandparents. He became a telegraph boy in Pittsburgh at the age of 12. Edward J. Allen (1830–1915), the secretary/treasurer of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company, recognized Alexander's drawing talent while he worked there and adopted him. Allen brought Alexander to the Allen home at "Edgehill" where Alexander painted various members of the Allen family, including Colonel Allen.

Alexander moved to New York City at the age of 18 and worked in an office at Harper's Weekly, where he was an illustrator and political cartoonist at the same time that Edwin Austin Abbey, Joseph Pennell, Howard Pyle, and other celebrated illustrators worked there. After an apprenticeship of three years, he traveled to Munich for his first formal training. Owing to the lack of funds, he removed to the village of Polling, Bavaria, and worked with Frank Duveneck. They traveled to Venice, where he profited from the advice of Whistler, and then he continued his studies in Florence, the Netherlands, and Paris.

Career

In 1881, he returned to New York City and quickly achieved great success in portraiture, numbering among his sitters Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Burroughs, Henry G. Marquand, R.A.L. Stevenson, and James McCosh, the president of Princeton University.