Elected ARSA: 19 March 1902
Elected RSA: 13 February 1913
The watercolourist Edwin John Alexander was born in Edinburgh on 1 February 1870, son of the animal painter, Robert Alexander RSA RSW (1840-1923). It seems that a sketching trip to Tangiers at the age of 17, along with his father, Joseph Crawhall (1861-1913) and Pollock Sinclair Nesbit ARSA RWS (1848-1922) piqued his interest in painting. Information concerning Alexander’s education is rather unclear though it is certain that he attended the RSA schools and later studied at the atelier of animal sculptor, Emmanuel Frémiet (1824-1910), in Paris. Adventure was a major part of Alexander’s life. One of several excursions was begun in 1892 when he travelled to North Africa and lived in a houseboat on the Nile amongst Bedouins. He lived there for four years and also learned Arabic. His paintings of Bedouins are among the few depictions of people he attempted, and they feature a genuine humanity and do not orientalise the subjects as was common at the time.
After returning to Scotland, Alexander created a menagerie of animals which served as the basis for much of his art. With the use of watercolour, gouache and sometimes oil paint, on either paper or occasionally linen, Alexander was capable of creating a vibrant sense of light and emotional immediacy, focusing on the commonly overlooked, such as a few strands of plants or insects. In 1902 he was elected ARSA and two years later he married Dorothea Maclellan with whom he had two children. He became a member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1910, the Royal Scottish Water Colour Society in 1911, an RSA in 1913 submitting his Diploma Work, Arab Boy with Donkeys, and became a tutor at the Edinburgh College of Art in 1914. He died in Musselburgh on 23 April 1926.
