TESTIMONIAL TO
JOHN W. ALEXANDER
under the auspices of
the fine ARTS FEDERATION OF NEW YORKKKK ^ 1 ^ »
IN THE city of NEW YORK

.J

PHOTOGRAPH BY CURTIS BELL

JOHN W.ALEXANDER
IN HIS NEW YORK STUDIO

ADDRESS OF
MR. JOHN G. AGAR
President National Arts Club
AND RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED AT THE
TESTIMONIAL TO
JOHN W. ALEXANDER
UNDER THE AUSPICES OF
THE FINE ARTS FEDERATION OF NEW YORK
IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK

SUNDAY EVENING
MAY TWENTY-EIGHTH
NINETEEN-SIXTEEN

ADDRESS OF MR. AGAR
• •
It is well for us to call to mind with gratitude the life
and work of John W. Alexander.
It is also fitting that we should do so at the invitation
of the Fine Arts Federation of New York, comprising in
its membership representatives of most of the arts, and
thus recalling the wide reach of his artistic aspirations.
And it is especially fitting that we should do so here ; here
in the city of his ultimate achievement; here where he
wrought and won and died, leaving an example rich in
moral energy and in spiritual accomplishment.
Now when the sounds of war disturb our ear^ and the
standards of material strength and glory are worshipped,
it is timely to recall his life and learn from it how our
richest national development has been forced by those
who make their conquests in the spiritual order.
And when we examine his story from the day when he
came to New York, unknown, at eighteen years of age,
to the day, a year ago, when he passed away, we find a
long, strong effort to live a life of spiritual benefit through
artistic achievement, maintained with courage, confi
dence, unselfishness, crowned with success glorious to him
and inspiring to us.
Born near Pittsburg in 1856, he was early left an
orphan, and was thus early forced to develop his charac
ter in an environment not too encouraging.
For a while he was sent to the public schools by his
grandparents. But he left school at twelve and took a
position in Pittsburg as a messenger boy for a telegraph
company. An officer of that company became interested
[3]

in him and, upon the death of his grandfather, brought
him to his own home and later assumed his guardianship.
Here the boy lived until he was eighteen.
But wishing beyond all things to become an artist, he
decided to move to New York. Here he arrived in 1874,
unknown and unbefriended, and presented himself to
Harper Brothers, requesting to be placed in the Art
Department. He was told no position was vacant except that of
office boy. He took that place and reported for duty next
morning. For eight months he labored and made a mark
for promptness and efficiency.
At that time illustrations for magazines were made by
work directly upon the wooden block, several men fre
quently working upon the same block, and this was the
work assigned to him when he was finally transferred to
the Illustrating Department. He usually put in the fig
ures, but such composite illustrations were mostly un
signed. We do not find much that throws light upon this
period of Alexander's work, although there appear occa
sionally cartoons signed by him between September, 1875,
and the middle of the year 1877. They are very interest
ing and amusing.
He remained there for about three years, and in the
late summer of 1877, with three hundred dollars saved,
he sailed from Philadelphia for Liverpool. He went to
Paris, and, finding the lEcole des Beaux Arts closed for
repairs, passed on to Munich. Here he studied for about
three months in the class of Professor Benzour at the
Munich Academy of Fine Arts. But the expense of living
in Munich being too high and the method of the school
being too severe and academic, Alexander moved on to
Polling in Northern Bavaria, where there was a small
colony of American artists. [4]

Here he began to paint.
From this school he sent some of his drawings to the
Students' Exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts in
Munich. He was awarded a bronze medal, his first honor.
Two years, embracing 1878 and 1879, were thus spent.
After leaving Polling, Mr. Alexander joined a class of
art students which Frank Duveneck had arranged to
take to Florence, where they spent the next two years,
going in the summer to Venice.
He made his living by sending drawings back to Har-
per's. Later in Florence he started an art class, and this
was successful. So much of his time, however, was taken
in teaching that he realized that his own work and devel
opment were in danger, and he determined to return home
to Pittsburg. Upon his arrival there he had no money
and found little opportunity, so he came back to New
York in 1881 and remained here for about ten years.
But he spent two summers abroad, in 1884 in Spain
and Morocco, and in 1886 in doing work on the Continent
for the Century Magazine.
He was married in 1887 to Miss Elizabeth Alexander.
And then began an influence which grew with years, not
less elevating than tender, not less stimulating than last
ing, and which united in itself the tenacious beauty of the
vine that clings and the confident dignity of the tree that
supports. During this decade Mr. Alexander failed to impress
upon his countrymen either the beauty of his work or the
fineness of his character; so that early in 1890, disap
pointed and depressed at this failure, he went to France,
expecting to be absent two years, but remaining eleven
years, laboring at his art and doing much of his best
artistic work.
Remember that during this time, with a wife and baby
[5]

boy, he was struggling to live by his art and to make his
art live, and that he had been refused recognition at
home. But, strong and confident in his own ability to win rec
ognition, he never wavered, and what his countrymen
then failed to appreciate France soon found worthy of
high honor.
At the exhibition of the Societe Nationale des Beaux
Arts in Paris in the spring of 1893 he displayed three
portraits. This group was the feature of the exhibition.
The pictures were marked Number One, were hung to
gether in a panel, and he was immediately after elected
an Associate of the Society. This was followed by the ex
hibit at the Grafton Gallery in London of two portraits,
which were given a place of honor.
In the spring of the next year, 1894, he exhibited a
group of five portraits and two compositions at the
Beaux Arts, and in June he was elected to full mem
bership in that Society, was made Societaire with the
privilege of exhibiting hors concours, of voting with the
Society and of serving on its juries.
The honors bestowed by France placed Mr. Alexander
at once among the front rank of the younger painters in
that country. He was then thirty-eight years of age.
His ability was soon thereafter recognized everywhere,
even at home, and his success in having his message read
assured. He was invited to contribute to the exhibitions of
Europe and of the United States, and today nearly every
important prominent collection, national and civic, con
tains an example of his work — the Luxembourg in Paris,
museums in Petrograd, Odessa and Vienna, in New York,
Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, St. Louis, Pitts
burg, Cincinnati, Minneapolis and Providence, Stevens
[6]

Institute of Technology, Princeton, Yale, Harvard and
Columbia Universities. Medals and awards came to him
from most distinguished sources.
His first medal was won at the Students' Exhibition at
Munich about 1879, and the last was from the Panama-
Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco in
1915. Between these years the Pennsylvania Fine Arts Acad
emy, the Carnegie Institute, the Society of American
Artists, the Society of Washington Artists, the Exposi
tion Universelle of Paris, the Pan-American Exposition
at Buffalo, the Universal Exposition at St. Louis, gave
by their awards and medals further evidence of the full
recognition which he won as a painter of unusual ability
and distinction.
In 1901 France made him a Knight of the Legion of
Honor, and in 1909 Princeton University made him a
Doctor of Literature.
In 1901 Mr. Alexander and his family returned to
America, and from that time until the end, May 31st of
last year, he lived in this city, worked ceaselessly at his
painting and sought intensely to promote the interest of
art in America and the interest of his country in the arts.
At this time his merit was universally recognized and
his fight won. But, instead of resting, he began a new
effort to benefit his country which was not less arduous
because its success was more certain.
He took an active interest in various art societies, and
at the time of his death was associated, as officer or promi
nent member, with twenty such organizations. Notably,
he was President of the National Academy of Design and
of the Fine Arts Federation of this city ; of the National
Institute of Arts and Letters ; of the National Academy
Association, and of the School Art League of New York.
[7]

A closer study of his life shows three predominant quali
ties : The quality of power, the quality of beauty, and the
quality of sacrifice.
His power is shown in the success of his career. His
character, formed in the furnace of trial, inspiring his
every effort, made the end inevitable.
There was no show of force, no effort to be conspicuous,
but the quiet working out by strength of wUl of the des
tiny which his imagination made glorious. From the time
when he succeeded in getting into Harper's by accepting
the position of oflice boy, to the time when he took his
first prize for drawing at Munich, through the period of
his failure in New York to the acknowledgment of his
merit in 1893 on the Champs de Mars, down to the last
medal in 1915, all was accomplished quietly and surely
by little outside aid, by no fortunate accidents, by nothing
less than a serene power, clear in vision, sure in its result
and imperative in its demand.
The power was in his soul and the means used were
spiritual. As an artist. Beauty was his bride. He loved her too
much to sacrifice to her either truth in his message or
sincerity in his method.
We have had little time in this country to devote to the
production of beauty or to the study of its forms. We
have had to devise and develop a political government,
conquer a wilderness, fashion the commerce and industry
of a throbbing nation in a vast continent. Our best minds
have been too much occupied with these immediate works
to find time for the larger spiritual endeavor, apparently
less important. But with the last decade of the nineteenth
century came a wider, more general, popular apprecia
tion of all that nature means, a gradual understanding
that all do not live by bread alone, and that the expres-
[8]

sion of beauty is in itself a worthy work for the greatest.
Heretofore and mainly what art we had came from
foreign lands or was estimated by foreign standards. But
by a slow process there has appeared an appreciation
here of the important spiritual forces set free by the pur
suit of beauty. Education has opened up new views to us,
and gradually we are becoming as a nation alive to the
beautiful, as an end in itself.
Mr. Alexander has been one of the forces in this awak
ening, both by his painting and by his educational and
social effort.
In all his painting he was courageously modern, look
ing to a fresher world of pictorial imagery.
He shows a rare candor of impression. The frankness
of a new civilization is in his pictures. In them everywhere
one feels the vitality of a young and vigorous race — a
race to whom beauty appeals with all the zest of a recent
discovery. One of his critics has said that it is this note
which his work oftenest sounds, reaching us in countless
ways and from a thousand varied color chords in gown,
background or bit of stiU life.
That is the beauty new-found which he expresses, not
as a foreigner to a strange people, but as a native to his
own. He loved it, worked for it and expressed it for his
people. They took it from him and love it the more as
coming from him, and love him the more for bringing it
to them in such form.
French and American critics have sharpened their
faculties to point out his individualities, his faults and
his merits. But to his countrymen it is the new harmony
of his conception with the highest spiritual type ex
pressed in flowing lines, in fine and delicate shades, that
appeals. Princeton University, giving him a degree, said :
[9]

"The firm brilliancy of his work, tempered by an even
finer restraint, and the engaging beauty of his concep
tions matched by a like beauty in execution, make him a
master whom we gladly enroll."
But the place he filled in the art life in his country was
far more extensive and important than is found in his
paintings. His relation to his fellow artists and absorp
tion in their welfare, his interest in art education, in the
public schools and in the use of museums by American
children, his efforts to harmonize true culture with the
democratic ideal, are all elements in the influence which
he exercised, and they all had their object to teach the
value of beauty, to preach devotion to beauty as an end,
all sufficient in itself.
By seeking to make the love of beauty a controlling
motive of expression, he sought to give direction to the
intellectual energies called into play by the awakening
national sentiment, as he believed that in the highest
forms of artistic expression morality and beauty are in
separable, if not identical.
His association with the School Art League is an in
stance of his methods and measures, one out of many.
When the School Art League was finally and fully organ
ized in 1911 he was elected President. He attended the
meetings regularly. From that moment the movement
grew steadily. He frequently visited the public schools,
was always ready to offer suggestions for the advance
ment of the work there. Of particular value was his in
terest in the scholarship students, some of whom he in
vited to his home to criticise their work.
At his suggestion an evening life class for women was
organized at the National Academy of Design.
Although one medal had been since 1909 given for fine
craftsmanship in the elementary schools, Mr. Alexander
[10]

gave a medal in each high school. Twenty-four were
awarded for the first time in 1916 — "too late," one mem
ber of the Society wrote, "too late for our beloved Presi
dent to have the pleasure of seeing them."
Another typical instance of his devotion was the dec
oration of Washington Irving High School. This was
promoted by the Municipal Art Society. Mr. Alexander
was chairman of the committee having this work in
charge, and as such passed upon all the designs sub
mitted for these decorations. He presented to Mrs. E. H.
Harriman the plan for a series of decorations in that
school, and she, under the spell of his enthusiasm, com
missioned Barry Faulkner to paint all the panels for one
of the halls. He approved all the sketches and the finished
relief by Miss Frances Grimes above the mantel in the
same haU, and approved with equal heartiness the Munic
ipal Art Society's own decoration in the staircase hall
drawn by Mr. Stoughton, stipulating that the execution
of the panels should be entrusted to some young, even
unknown, artist, who might so obtain his first recogni
tion. This was done, and the work of Lascari promises to
be as he would have wished it to be.
His interest and work in stage decoration is another
chapter in the book of his intense industry.
Although his interest in dramatic work showed itself
first in his personal interest in Maude Adams, his ener
gies soon overflowed this boundary and became an eager
striving to improve the art of stage setting. He became
the adviser of Maude Adams in the setting of "Peter
Pan" and "Chanticleer." In this latter play he produced
not only unusual stage effects of mystery in the forest
scene, but developed the practical advantage of having
the scenery on thin gauze so as to be easily rolled for
cheap transportation. [11]

All of this work culminated in the presentation of
"Joan of Arc" in the Stadium at Boston.
Tireless effort was devoted to it by him. Stage hands
were posed in various costumes under his direction and
their costumes were modified, simplified and changed in
color until an artistic result was had.
No less than twenty-two hundred people were used in
the pageant, with scenery arranged to represent the
facade of the Cathedral of Rheims at one time, and at
another to represent an artificial hill so as to secure the
necessary elevation in grouping the subordinates.
The dramatic profession quickly recognized his ability
in stage decoration, and he was often called in as an ex
pert in color, in costume and in general stage arrange
ment by prominent actors.
Again, his ability as a critic and his constructive in
dustry had rare scope in his association with the Metro
politan Museum of Art.
He became a member of the Board of Trustees of the
Museum in 1910 by virtue of being President of the Na
tional Academy of Design. He took an active interest in
developing the scope of the Museum's influence, joining
heartily in the endeavor to increase the use of the Museum
by the people and to afford them opportunity to study
the best and greatest variety of art objects.
He was, at the time of his death, a member of the Ex
ecutive Committee and of the Committee on Purchases,
and chairman of the Committee on Paintings.
His interest in the McDowell Club was due to its de
sign to promote the association of artists, writers and
musicians. It was McDowell's idea that no school of music could
develop in this country without the cooperation of the
other arts, and Alexander labored long to promote this
intimate association.
One of his last active interests was the Peterborough
[12]

Colony, where a home is provided by the McDowell Fund
for writers, painters and musicians, and where they may
feel free from care and undisturbed by the discords which
so jarred upon Mr. Alexander's own early life.
He also spent much time in developing the Alexander
canvas. Textures of ordinary burlap appealed to him,
but knowing that this was not permanent he induced
some manufacturers in France to weave the same tex
ture in linen. He then, in collaboration with many artist
friends, spent hours in experimenting with the prepara
tion for the texture. When he perfected his experiments
he turned the result over to the manufacturer for the
benefit of all artists.
We all know too well Mr. Alexander's long and earnest
efforts to erect an art building in this city, where all the
arts may be brought together in cooperation.
The construction of a great and artistic art temple
out of the offerings of the people was his dream.
He remembered the magnificent buildings erected in
the Middle Ages by large private donations, by public
contributions, but principally by the voluntary offerings
of the poor — ^buildings which expressed their pride and
patriotic fervor, which brought them together in celebra
tions of civic events.
He longed for such an edifice in New York, but he
failed to build it, and, in failing, gave his life to the cause.
Should we not take courage from his failure and make
the vision real in the near future.''
That would be an incomparable memorial to his incom
parable spirit.
I have instanced these activities of Mr. Alexander to
prove how real and immediate was his love of beauty in
all its forms. He was an echo in our life of the long-gone
age when beauty was supreme; when the spirit of art
[13]

penetrated every department of life and gave form to
all the products of design, in the great cathedrals, in
statues and pictures, in the weaving and embroidering
of stuffs, in the shape and omament of dress, in metal
work, in the work of the blacksmith and of the goldsmith,
in armor, in jewelry, in articles for the table and the
altar, in the woodwork of the carpenter and of the joiner.
He recognized the principle that there is a community
in the arts and that they do not flourish in isolation, and
longed for the day to come again when an artistic imag
ination would guide the hand in all the work it did.
I have spoken in vain if I have not shown the quality of
sacriflce which animated him in all of his activities.
Gifted with a fine presence, an engaging personality, a
ready judgment and a sweeping imagination, he made
and held many close friends.
But his appeal was to the wider sphere of his fellow
citizens, to schoolboys and to schoolgirls, to all who
needed his advice and to all who heeded his incessant call.
He prayed to be allowed to help, and he spared himself
little in the long days during which that help was given.
His frail frame, unable longer to hold his aspiring soul,
gave way before its time, all too soon.
He was in truth the servant.
In his life he attained the ideal of his profession — to
create beauty, to hold it up to his fellow countrymen and
to make them realize that the highest happiness is to live
in the region of things impalpable, the beautiful life of
self -forgetfulness.
In his death he has become the possession of the country.
He has taken with him his powers, but he has left to us
his beauty and his sacrifice.

[14]

RESOLUTIONS
IN REFERENCE TO THE PERMANENT
MEMORIAL

^^tttSi^y The eminence of John W. Alexander as an
artist and his broad usefulness in advancing the
cause of Art in the community in which he lived, and
in the whole country, entitle him to recognition from
his fellow artists in a lasting memorial, to his mem
ory ; and
^)^ttt!k^, The influence of his high achievements as
a painter, which place him among the foremost of
American artists, should be disseminated as widely as
possible by making the American people familiar with
his pictures ; and
^l^tttSi^, His efficient service in connection with the
teaching of art in the public schools should be marked
by some constant reminder of this service,
25e it rejBfolbeti:
tfjat a bronze tablet bearing a portrait of Mr. Alexan
der with a suitable inscription be procured, and placed
temporarily in the rooms of the National Academy of
Design in the Fine Arts Society Building, and finally
in the permanent building for the United Art Societies
which it is hoped will be erected in the City of New
York, and toward the realization of which Mr. Alex
ander devoted so much of his time and energy ; and
[15]

t|)at a comprehensive coUection of large photographic
reproductions of Mr. Alexander's work be formed, to
be used as a traveling exhibition, and sent from town
to town through the country, and exhibited in such
art museums, libraries and schools as may be able to
exhibit the pictures properly ; and
tijat the design of the tablet or such features as are suit
able shaU be used for striking a medal, to be known
as the John W. Alexander medal.

[16]

THE JOHN W. ALEXANDER MEDAL
BY JOHN FLANAGAN
AWARDED BY THE SCHOOL ART LEAGUE
OF NEW YORK