Henry Alexander (1860 – May 15, 1894) was an American painter from

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. He was born in

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.Frankenstein, Alfred (1970). ''The Reality of Appearance''. Greenwich: New York Graphic Society. p. 150. After early exhibiting a talent for drawing and painting, he went to study at the

Academy of Fine Arts The following is a list of notable art schools. Accredited non-profit art and design colleges * Adelaide Central School of Art * Alberta College of Art and Design * Art Academy of Cincinnati * Art Center College of Design * The Art Institute o ...

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, where his teachers were Ludwig von Loeffts and the history painter Wilhelm Lindenschmidt.The Bay of San Francisco
vol 2, pp. 643-44 (Lewis Publishing Company, 1892). Aside from a few

trompe-l'œil ''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...

paintings, his paintings generally depict individuals within highly detailed interiors. He is especially known for his paintings of men in cluttered offices filled with business furnishings or laboratory equipment, such as his several paintings of the

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Thomas Price. He also painted

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and

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ese subjects. He left San Francisco for

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on April 15, 1887, in order to be at the center of the art world, but he suffered from money troubles and

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. 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. Alexander's work attracted enough notice that the ''

New York Herald The ''New York Herald'' was a large-distribution newspaper based in New York City that existed between 1835 and 1924. At that point it was acquired by its smaller rival the ''New-York Tribune'' to form the '' New York Herald Tribune''. His ...

'' described him as one of the creators of the modern school of art. On May 15, 1894, his money troubles led him to commit suicide by swallowing

oxalic acid Oxalic acid is an organic acid with the systematic name ethanedioic acid and formula . It is the simplest dicarboxylic acid. It is a white crystalline solid that forms a colorless solution in water. Its name comes from the fact that early inve ...

in the Oriental Hotel at Broadway and Thirty-Ninth Street."Artist Alexander Commits Suicide,"
New York Times, May 16, 1894. Many of his works were destroyed in the

San Francisco earthquake of 1906 At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...

List of paintings

*''Morning Prayer'' *''Sunday Afternoon'' *''Scene from 'The Mikado' with Louise Paullin'' *''Lost Genius'' *''First Lesson'' *''Neglecting Business (Playing Chess)'', 1887 (now in the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco) *''The Letter Home'' *''Lesson in Gunning'' *T''he 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 The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, purchased 1939, item number 39.46)

References

External links

Henry Alexander at American Art GalleryHenry Alexander papers, 1879-1888
from the Smithsonian

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alexander, Henry Painters who committed suicide 19th-century American painters American male painters Trompe-l'œil artists 1860 births 1894 deaths Academy of Fine Arts, Munich alumni Suicides by poison Suicides in New York City Painters from California Artists from San Francisco American expatriates in Germany 1890s suicides 19th-century American male artists