John White 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.

He was several times a judge at the annual exhibit of the Carnegie Institution, and in other years he won prizes, once an honorable mention and twice the first prize, the second time in 1911 for Sunlight.

He served as a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1909 until his death in 1915.

He was among the artists who founded the National Society of Mural Painters in 1895 and he was elected to a five-year term as its president in 1914.

Personal life

Alexander was married to Elizabeth Alexander (1866–1947), to whom he was introduced in part because of their shared last name. She was the daughter of James Waddell Alexander (1839–1915), longtime executive of the Equitable Life Assurance Society. The Alexanders had one child, the Princeton mathematician James Waddell Alexander II.

Alexander died of heart disease at his home in New York City on May 31, 1915. He was buried in Princeton, New Jersey, following a church service in Manhattan.

The Cleveland Museum of Art presented a memorial exhibit that included 27 of his works during the summer of 1917.

Works Many of his paintings are in museums and public places in the United States and in Europe, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Butler Institute, and the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. In addition, in the entrance hall to the Art Museum of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a series of Alexander's murals titled "Apotheosis of Pittsburgh" (1905–1907) covers the walls of the three-story atrium area.

Alexander's artist's proof of his portrait of Whitman, signed by the artist in April 1911, is in the Walt Whitman Collection at the University of Pennsylvania.

Gallery