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Alexander was born in Edinburgh, son of the painter Robert Alexander (1840–1923) from whom he learned much.
He visited Tangier with his father and Joseph Crawhall, nine years his senior, in the winter of 1887–88 which sparked
a lifelong fascination for the desert and the Arab world. He did study in Edinburgh and Paris with his friend Robert
Burns (1861–1941) but was drawn back to North Africa and was based in Egypt, living on a houseboat on the Nile
from 1892–1896. James Caw writing in his book Scottish Painting Past and Present (TC and EC Jack, Edinburgh, 1908)
notes ‘… that this young painter dwelt among the Arabs, living their simple life in the tents and sharing their daily lives.’
His depictions of camels and donkeys and the soft, varied, fawn coloured landscape with warm sunlight and purple
shadow are observed as an intimate not a tourist.
Caw ascribes a similar charm to Alexander’s home landscape. ‘Low-horizoned ploughed lands with birds on
wing on the high airy sky; long ebb-tide sands glimmering in the deepening twilight; and bare uplands with nibbling
sheep seen in the delicate harmony wrought by a grey spring day – these and such-like are the themes he loves.
It is as a painter of birds and the natural world for which he is rightly celebrated. The Fine art Society mounted an
exhibition for The Edinburgh Festival in 1985 called Camels, Cobwebs and Honeysuckles featuring Alexander and Crawhall
and they stand out as two of the most brilliant draftsmen of their generation whose particular, quiet vision has often
been drowned out – by noisier more self-conscious art. Caw was hugely tempted to include Crawhall in his history but
as a strict nationalist the painter’s Northumbrian origin ruled him out. Alexander he praises for his delicacy of drawing,
his colour: ‘fastidious and harmonious’ and his rare regard for decorative placing. His love of birds is clear in so many
delicate, perfect representations of birds and he kept owls and peacocks at his home in Musselburgh.
Alexander had the first of four one-man shows with The Scottish Gallery in 1901 and the following year was
made an associate of The RSA. In 1904 he married into the Dott family and settled in Edinburgh. Sadly he had a stroke
in 1917 and died aged only fifty-six. His memorial exhibition was held at The Gallery.
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