John White Alexander - part 3

John White Alexander, a native of Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, worked as an illustrator in Harper and Brothers in his youth, just as Winslow Homer had done a decade before. In 1877, White joined the  ‘Duveneck boys’ in Munich, where training, much influenced by Hals, Velázquez and Courbet, was freer and looser than that of Paris or Dusseldorf. The work of the Munich artists was often richly brushed in a predominantly dark palette, and although the vogue was brief and was supplanted by the Barbizon and Paris schools, it produced a number of talented Americans, notably Frank Duveneck, William Merritt Chase, John White Alexander, and, John Twachtman.

In 1891, Alexander moved to Paris and over the next ten years gained prominence as an exponent of the current Art Noveau trend. However this was only one of several influences that converged on him and other artists during these years. In the 1890s proponents of the so-called Aesthetic Movement decried the Ruskinian conviction that art must perform a moral and didactic function and instead asserted that art was autonomous and self-referential. Free of literary, narrative conventions, artists could favour mood over story and assert the formal, evocative properties of color and line for their own sake.

This new freedom encouraged a shift in subject matter toward the representation of objects and figures that were simply beautiful in themselves. The culture of the 1890s, gritty and ugly as it appeared, produced such subject matter in abundance. The century’s end had witnessed the explosive growth of commerce, industry, and urban concentration, contributing to the creation of great fortunes in few hands; it also contributed to a radical adjustment in the social roles of women of the upper and middle classes. Deprived of the centrally productive role they had previously performed in a rural society, women were now relegated to a decorative role, serving as beautiful symbols of male wealth and status. As such they were bountifully represented by artists, and their images were eagerly acquired by patrons. It is noteworthy that in the current exhibition of fifty-two paintings there are twenty-four representations of women, almost exclusively upper class, and only one male self-portrait.

Alexander’s many depictions of beautiful women were also colored by his susceptibility to the prevailing Art Nouveau, an elaborately decorative style that emphasises the use of sinuous and sensuous contours. This movement was popularised by the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, the dramatic posters of Alphonse Mucha, and the stained glass of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Alexander’s work was also touched by the prevailing vogue for symbolism, the visual evocation of an idea, of an emotion through the association of analogous qualities.

This is part 3 of a 3-part series on the works of John White Alexander. For earlier works see parts 1 & 2 also.

1909 Sunlight
oil on canvas 212 x 141 cm

c1909 President Mary Emma Woolley
oil on canvas 125 x 100.6 cm 
Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium, MA

c1910-11 Portrait of Alonzo Barton Hepburn
oil on canvas 71 x 56.2 cm

1911 Portrait of Stephen Grover Cleveland (1837-1908)
oil on canvas 127 x 101.6 cm

1911 The Ring
oil on canvas 123.8 x 92.4 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

c1911 June
oil on canvas 124.3 x 91.6 cm
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

1912 The Gossip
oil on canvas 160.8 x 137.2 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

n.d. A Quiet Corner
oil on canvas 71 x 56 cm

n.d. Autumn in the Forest (New York)
oil on canvas 16 x 20 cm

n.d. Bridge in Ireland
watercolour and ink on paper 17 x 29.5 cm
Brooklyn Museum, New York

n.d. Contemplation
oil on canvas laid down on panel 99 x 63.5 cm

n.d. James McNeill Whistler
charcoal on paper 82.6 x 43.2 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

n.d. Mountain Vista
oil on canvas 47.6 x 57.8 cm

n.d. Onteora
oil on canvas 203 x 109 cm

n.d. Portrait of a girl in a red dress
oil on canvas 100.5 x 54.6 cm

n.d. Portrait of a woman in an off-the-shoulder gown
oil on canvas 101.6 x 57.1 cm

n.d. Portrait of a woman
oil on canvas 61 x 50.8 cm

n.d. "Thirty-Two Pounds Massa"
woodcut on newsprint34.3 x 22.2 cm (framed)

n.d. Portrait of Mercer Beasley
oil on canvas 150.5 x 125.7 cm

n.d. The Green Gown oil on canvas 102.2 x 54.6 cm

n.d. Study of Peonies
oil on canvas 50.2 x 61 cm

n.d. Still Life with quill and ginger jar
watercolour on paper laid down on board 36.2 x 16.5 cm

n.d. Still life with flagon and roses
watercolour on paper 22.9 x 15.2 cm

n.d. Silhouette of a young girl
charcoal on paper 36.8 x 27.3 cm

n.d. Seated woman
pencil, ink and gouache on board 55.9 x 40.6 cm

n.d. Portrait of William O'Brien
pen and black ink and gouache over graphite on off-white wove paper 26.6 xx 20.8 cm
Princeton University Art Museum. PA
Bequest of Dan Fellows Platt, Class of 1895

n.d. Portrait of Michael Davitt, the Irish patriot
pen and black ink and gouache over graphite 18.5 x 15.7 cm
Princeton University Art Museum. PA,
 Bequest of Dan Fellows Platt, Class of 1895