John White Alexander was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania in 1856, and as a young man he worked as a telegraph messenger before it was learned that he was a talented illustrator. His career began at Harper's Weekly as a political cartoonist and illustrator. As part of his assignments he was sent out on location to work en plein aire to create the drawings which were then converted to wood engravings.

After working as an illustrator he had traveled in Europe with Frank Duveneck and William Merritt Chase and spent the most time in Munich, where he attended the Royal Academy. It was in Venice where he was introduced to the Tonalist style of painting through James McNeill Whistler. In 1881 he returned to New York and quickly achieved great success in portraiture, numbering among his sitters Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Burroughs, Walt Whitman, Henry G. Marquand, R. A. L. Stevenson, and the president of Princeton University.

Alexander and his wife lived in Paris from 1890 to 1901, and while there they cultivated a circle of friends that reads as a Who’s Who of art and literature of the time: Oscar Wilde, Henry James, James Whistler, Auguste Rodin and Andre Gide are just a few examples. This was also the time when he developed his signature style that can be witnessed in our painting, An Interesting Book. These powerful and imaginative works consisted of portraits and elongated female figures in dimly lit backgrounds. About this period in Alexander’s work, Sarah J. Moore observes, “Influenced by the pervasive example of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, champion of art-for-art's sake, Alexander's painting from the 1890s on asserts the decorative potential of figure painting whose primary impulse is aesthetic and formal rather than referential or representational.”

His participation in the annual Paris salons of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, beginning in 1893, signaled his direct and vital involvement with several international art organizations and exhibitions including the Carnegie International Exhibition; the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, London; the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition (where he won the Gold Medal) and in 1901 he was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Upon returning to the U.S. in 1901, Alexander and his wife settled in New York where he became a portrait painter of scores of prominent people. The sitter for the present work, An Interesting Book, happened to be Evelyn Nesbit, one of the most sought after models of the time, who sat for some of the city’s most famous artists, among them Charles Dana Gibson, Carroll Beckwith, Frederick S. Church. She would later find herself at the center of the highly publicized scandal and murder of New York’s most famous architect Stanford White by her then husband Harry K. Thaw in 1906. Alexander’s formal approach in this painting is consistent with the stylistic refinements developed during his stay in Paris. An Interesting Book features a sophisticated treatment of shape through the contrast of light and shadow emerging into beautifully delicate edges. These edges are further accented by a rich dominant tone containing powerful yet subtle color gradations, especially in the subject’s face, and an asymmetrical composition that, overall, results in a brilliantly executed work at the height of his career.

He became increasingly involved in the development and promotion of American art that lead to his membership at the National Academy of Design in 1902. He was awarded the Gold Medal at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. He eventually became president of the National Academy from 1909 until just before his death in 1915.

Alexander’s works are found in the following public and private collections: The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh/Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, MA; National Academy of Design Museum, New York City, NY; National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Rhode Island School of Design-Museum of Art, Providence, RI; Sheldon Swope Art Museum, Terre Haute, IN; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY; The Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; Watson Gallery, Wheaton College, Norton, MA and Yale University Art Gallery; New Haven, CT.