Reproduction classic paintings painted in oil on canvas - Alexander

John WhiteAlexander (American painter) 1856 - 1915

John White Alexander was an American portrait, figurative, decorative painter and illustrator. Orphaned at an early age, he was raised by his grandparents and at the age of 12 became a telegrapher in Pittsburgh. His talent for drawing caught the attention of one of his employers, who helped him develop them.

He moved to New York at the age of eighteen and worked in an office in Harper's Weekly, as an illustrator and political cartoonist at the same time asAbbey, Pennell, Pyle and other famous illustrators who worked there. After a three-year apprenticeship, he went to Munich for his first training.

Due to lack of funds, he moved to the village of Polling, Bavaria, and worked with Frank Duveneck. They go to Venice, where he benefits from the advice of Whistler, then he continues his studies in Florence, the Netherlands and Paris. In 1881 he returned to New York and quickly achieved great success in portraiture, counting Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Burroughs, Henry G. Marquand, RAL Stevenson, and President McCosh of Princeton University among his models.

His first exhibition at the Paris Salon of 1893 was a brilliant success and was followed by his immediate election to the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts. Many additional honors were bestowed upon him. In 1889 he painted a well-received portrait of Walt Whitman and one of his husbands, Jeremiah Milbank, for Mrs. Jeremiah Milbank. In 1901, he was named Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, and in 1902 he became a member of the National Academy of Design.

He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and President of the National Society of Mural Painters. Among the gold medals he received are those of the Universal Exhibition in Paris (1900) and the Universal Exhibition of Saint-Louis (1904).

Alexander was married to Elizabeth Alexander Alexander, to whom he was introduced in part because of their shared surname. Elizabeth was the daughter of James Waddell Alexander, president of the Equitable Life Assurance Society at the time of the Hyde Ball scandal. The Alexanders had one child, mathematician James Waddell Alexander II.

John White Alexander died in New York on May 31, 1915. Many of his paintings are in museums and public places in the United States and Europe, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Butler Institute and the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Additionally, in the lobby of the Art Museum at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, a series of murals by Alexander titled "Apotheosis of Pittsburgh" (1905-1907) covers the walls of the three-storey atrium.