Henry Alexander (b. San Francisco, 1860 - d. New York, May 15, 1894) was an American painter from California.
After early exhibiting a talent for drawing and painting, he went to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where his teachers were Ludwig von Loeffts and the history painter Wilhelm Lindenschmidt.[1]
The New York Herald described Henry Alexander as one of the creators of the modern school of art.[1]
Aside from a few trompe-l'oeil paintings, his paintings generally depict individuals within highly detailed interiors. He also painted Chinese and Japanese subjects.
He left San Francisco for New York City on April 15, 1887, in order to be at the center of the art world, but he suffered from money troubles and alcoholism. He had a studio at 51 West Tenth Street. The other artists in the building avoided him, because he was always trying to borrow money. On May 15, 1894, his money troubles led him to commit suicide by swallowing oxalic acid in the Oriental Hotel at Broadway and Thirty-Ninth Street.[2]
List of Paintings
· Morning Prayer
· Sunday Afternoon
· Lost Genius
· First Lesson
· Neglecting Business (Playing Chess), 1887 (now in the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco)
· The Letter Home
· Lesson in Gunning
· The Cap Makers (as of 1892, in the collection of Thomas D. Clark)
· Sunday Morning (as of 1892, in the collection of Thomas D. Clark)
· Interesting Game (as of 1892, in the collection of Thomas D. Clark)
· The Hebrew Orphan Asylum (the painter's favorite)
· In the Laboratory (painted 1885-87; a portrait of the San Francisco assayer Thomas Price; in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, purchased 1939, item number 39.46)
References
1. ^ a b The Bay of San Francisco, vol 2, pp. 643-44 (Lewis Publishing Company, 1892).
2. ^ "Artist Alexander Commits Suicide," New York Times, May 16, 1894.
External links
Henry Alexander papers, 1879-1888 from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art
