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Lot Essay
Hailed contemporaneously as “Courageously Modern” (Munsey’s Magazine, vol. 39, no. 26), John White Alexander created a remarkable oeuvre influenced by his extensive travel amid avant-garde social circles. As in many of Alexander’s best mature works, A Rose stunningly features a woman who is at once contemplative and decorative. The painting is unapologetically beautiful. Per art historian John C. Van Dyke, “Such pictures as…‘A Rose’…have no counterpart in any painting, ancient or modern...they are Alexander’s own creations–his distinct contribution to art” (American Painting and its Tradition, New York, 1919, p. 229).
Alexander was born and raised in Pittsburgh, before making his way to New York for an early career in illustration. He then set off to Paris and Germany to further his studies in art. Under the mentorship of fellow American expatriate Frank Duveneck, he explored the bold, painterly Munich style of portraiture and traveled to Italy, meeting James Abbott McNeill Whistler. He later led a cosmopolitan lifestyle, moving between Paris and New York City as a prominent member of the fashionable social, literary and artistic circles. During the 1890s he became close friends with Henry James and entertained such notables as Claude Debussy, John Singer Sargent, Isabella Stewart Gardner and Oscar Wilde.
Completed in advance of Alexander’s 1902 show at New York’s Durand-Ruel Galleries, A Rose received significant attention, earning accolades in The New York Sun’s review of the exhibition:
“Among these pictures no better illustration of his ability in drawing can be mentioned than ‘A Rose.’ What a really exquisite wind of movement in the figure of this girl in a greenish silk dress, striped with black, as she bows her head over a rose in the act of fingering its petals! The gesture is so supple and continuous, every part of the body responding to it. Moreover, how the delicate color scheme and intricacy of the lighting are attuned to the sentiment of the gesture! In a picture like this, to my thinking, the artist reveals himself most persuasively. It is a conception of delicate imagination…which hovers close to earth, spontaneous and songful” (The New York Sun, 1902, op. cit., p. 8).
Alexander was born and raised in Pittsburgh, before making his way to New York for an early career in illustration. He then set off to Paris and Germany to further his studies in art. Under the mentorship of fellow American expatriate Frank Duveneck, he explored the bold, painterly Munich style of portraiture and traveled to Italy, meeting James Abbott McNeill Whistler. He later led a cosmopolitan lifestyle, moving between Paris and New York City as a prominent member of the fashionable social, literary and artistic circles. During the 1890s he became close friends with Henry James and entertained such notables as Claude Debussy, John Singer Sargent, Isabella Stewart Gardner and Oscar Wilde.
Completed in advance of Alexander’s 1902 show at New York’s Durand-Ruel Galleries, A Rose received significant attention, earning accolades in The New York Sun’s review of the exhibition:
“Among these pictures no better illustration of his ability in drawing can be mentioned than ‘A Rose.’ What a really exquisite wind of movement in the figure of this girl in a greenish silk dress, striped with black, as she bows her head over a rose in the act of fingering its petals! The gesture is so supple and continuous, every part of the body responding to it. Moreover, how the delicate color scheme and intricacy of the lighting are attuned to the sentiment of the gesture! In a picture like this, to my thinking, the artist reveals himself most persuasively. It is a conception of delicate imagination…which hovers close to earth, spontaneous and songful” (The New York Sun, 1902, op. cit., p. 8).