A brief stay in Paris, and it was in Germany at the Art Academy of Munich, as his artistic training began under the leadership of the Hungarian artist Gyuka Benczur. Then he joined the circle of artists Frank Duveneck with William Merritt Chase and Henry James, in the village of Polling, Bavaria. His early landscapes and genre scenes of the year 1875 bear the imprint of Munich realism Wilhelm Leibl . His fluid brush then resembled those of Frans Hals and Diego Velasquez, painters he admired deeply.'s circle of artists went to Venice, where Alexander profited advice James Abbott MacNeill Whistler . then he continued his learning of Art in Florence, Paris and the Netherlands.
In 1881, the artist returned to New York to teach drawing at the University of Princeton, he known very quickly success and public recognition from his first exhibition of portraits his palette, more restraint, already evoked emotions in the shadow and gesture. Among the models, we can see Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Burroughs, Henry G. Marquand, RAL Stevenson, and McCosh, president of Princeton University.
In 1889, on orders of Mrs. Jeremiah Milbank, John White Alexander batit fame by two superb portraits, one of Walt Whitman and other Milbank Mr. The artist gained international success in the 1890s through his portraits of idealized women in stylish interiors. His style says decorative potential of figurative painting, the main pulse is aesthetic and formal rather than referential or representation.
In 1893, his first exhibition at the Salon in Paris, those of the Carnegie International Exhibition and Salon Painters Sculptors and Engravers were brilliant successes. Followed the immediate election of the artist at the National Society of Fine Arts, at which point e of many honors were accorded him.
In 1901, John White Alexander was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and in 1902 he became a member of the National Academy of Design, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, President of the National Society of Painters Among awards he received during his career, he takes the prestigious Gold Medal of the Paris Universal Exposition in 1900 and the Universal Exposition in St. Louis in 1904.
Returning to the United States in 1904, elected President of the National Academy of Design from 1909 to 1915, Alexander did not cease to be involved in the developement and promotion of Art, he was commissioned to create many prestigious and murals.
Many works of John White Alexander are now exhibited in cheap wedding dresses
and public monuments in Europe and the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Butler Institute, and the Library of Congress in Washington DC. In addition, in the lobby of the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, a series of murals Alexander entitled "Apotheosis of Pittsburgh" (1905-1907) covers the walls of the atrium and three floors.
John White Alexander married Elizabeth Alexander Alexander, to whom he had been introduced in part because of their common Elizabeth was the daughter of James Waddell Alexander, President of the Equitable Life Assurance Society at the time of the Hyde Ball scandal. The couple had a child, the mathematician James Waddell Alexander II . John White Alexander died in New York, May 31, at the end of spring 1915.
To "rest", the provocative expression of character and soft curves reflected the French style of the period for representations of women are sensual and undulating rhythms and line of Art Nouveau. With this model wrapped in waves of fabric white, this work was mocked in a French magazine, the model was compared to the American dancer Loie Fuller (1862-1928), the wife butterfly, famous for manipulating swirling silk stage.
"Portrait of a Lady" was painted during the period of Alexander Paris. Time when ladies were favorite portrait subject. This profile is characterized by a simplification and flattening shapes, elegant contours and an asymmetric linear compostion. The palette is discrete and limited, with only one dominant tone. It may be noted here the pervasive influence of James Abbott MacNeill Whistler , master of Art for Art.
Psychological Study for "The Ring" (The Ring). Paintbrush became less pictorial, more concerned to provide diffuse forms, almost abstract. In his works, John White Alexander adopted a very large weaving cloth, the texture was an important factor in rendering his works ow.
Throughout his career, Alexander encouraged the compositions with a single tone on a high-contrast background.'s Curved and sinuous outline of heroin "Isabella" or "The P ot Basil" (1897) evokes the contemporary forms of Art N ew. ymbolistes As S, Alexander sought by the gesture and light to intensify the sensual treatment of the subject.