Robert Alexander RSA

[ClaireG]

Hi there,

I'm trying to track down living descendents of the artist Robert Alexander (1842-1923), who lived around Edinburgh (Colinton mostly). He had three children by his first wife and four by his second, Jemima Jane Martin, who was the only sister of my OH's great-grandfather Edward Martin. Can anyone help?

ClaireG

Researching Martins of Port Glasgow/Irvine

[LesleyB]

Hi Clare
...and welcome to Talking Scot.

I'm afraid we can't help find living relatives, only "lang deid yins".
There are other sites on the web which may be able to help
e.g.
http://www.192.com/content/help/trace-relatives-guide/
try searching in a search engine such as Google for more sites.
...and if you live in Scotland you might be able to trace forwards if you spent a day at the ScotlandsPeople centre in Edinburgh or Park Circus in Glasgow.

Recent records of births marriages and deaths are not availble to view online, (for obvious reasons!).

Best wishes
Lesley

[ClaireG]

Hi Lesley,

Thanks for the link, am hoping to be in Scotland after the summer crush. Is it OK to say that, in the meantime, if anyone out there happens to be descended from Robert Alexander and is also researching their family history, they're welcome to send me a message...?

ClaireG

[LesleyB]

Sure Claire - no problem! Anyone who wishes to contact you about recent folk can send you a private message using the PM button at the bottom of your post.

Best wishes
Lesley

[dvlewis7]

Robert Alexander was my great great grandfather. I found this out recently while looking through a book that my grandmother gave to me. The book" Wild Sports & Natural History of the Highlands" was given to my great grandfather James Lawton Wingate in 1923 by his father right before his death. There are prints in this book from Edwin Alexander. Although i have not been able to find much information about Robert Alexander.I do know now where I got my artistic talent.

[joette]

First posting & you have made a connection.I see Claire was on-line here this month or otherwise I would suggest sending a PM(Private Message) to her.Hopefully she will be in touch and if not as I said try PM'ing her.

[ClaireG]

Yes, please do PM me as I'm having problems PM-ing you!

[paddyscar]

Hi ClaireG:

You should be able to send dvlewis a message by clicking on the PM box to the right of message.

The instructions are available here. viewtopic.php?f=60&t=6760&hilit=sending+a+pm

If you continue to have a problem, please let us know at: talkings@talkingscot.com

Thanks,
Frances

[Currie]

Hello Claire & dvlewis7,

While you’re untangling the PM situation.

Wild Sports etc is now available at the Internet Archive.
http://www.archive.org/stream/wildsport ... 9/mode/2up

They also have The International Studio, 1911, which has an interesting write-up.
http://www.archive.org/stream/internati ... 6/mode/2up

There doesn’t appear to be a lot of info around about the father so I’ll add this obituary from The Scotsman, August 4, 1923.

THE LATE MR ROBERT ALEXANDER.
OLDEST MEMBER OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ACADEMY.
By the death of Mr Robert Alexander, which took place suddenly on Thursday evening at his house, Hailes Cottage, Slateford, the Royal Scottish Academy has lost its oldest Member and Scottish painting its finest and most conspicuous painter of animals. Born at Kilwinning, Ayrshire, in 1840, he served his time as a house painter at Irvine, but, desiring to become an artist, subsequently obtained a position in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, where he was employed in painting models and such like. He had already begun to paint pictures, but it was not until 1868 that he became an exhibitor at the Royal Scottish Academy, and about the same time, or a little later, he gave up his post at the Museum and devoted himself to picture painting. From then onward, for the long period of fifty-five years, he never missed an Academy exhibition, and in that now open he is represented by three pictures. Mr Alexander's work soon attracted the attention of the discerning, and in 1874 the three pictures he showed had already found owners. “Bob" belonged to that other lover of dogs, Dr John Brown; "A Suspicious Dog" to Captain Loder, a well-known collector; and "Moonstone, an Old Favourite," painted for Mr A. H. Houldsworth, was one of his earliest commissioned portraits of horses. Yet it was 1878 before he was elected an Associate, and ten years later ere he was made Academician. He was also a member of the Royal Scottish Water-colour Society, and, while most of his more important work was done in oils, he used water-colour with great facility and charm, and sketched delightfully in black and white. From time to time, too, he modelled in wax.
Choosing animals as subjects for his pictures, Mr Alexander occasionally—as in "Wat and Wearie," his diploma work; "Watching and Waiting," or "Auld Freens" in the Scottish Modern Arts Collection—associated human interest with animal incident; but, as a rule, it was animal life in itself, viewed sympathetically but not sentimentally, that attracted him. Such, for instance, were the themes of "The Happy Mother," the picture of a collie and pups, of which William Hole made a fine etching; "The Two Mothers," in the Melbourne Gallery; "Some Warreners," at present on view in the Academy; or "Cat and Dog Life." In all of these, it is to be noted, domestic animals appear. The only wild creatures one recalls having seen in his pictures are deer, and there are not many of them. And some fine sketches of camels, donkeys and Arabs were made in Tangier when be was there in 1887, accompanied by his son Edwin, and with Joseph Crawhall, then also young, as companion. In addition to pictures, with what may be called subject interest or incident, Mr Alexander painted many portraits of horses and dogs. Some of these, like "Favourite Mares and Foals," painted at Welbeck for the Duke of Portland, are almost as pictorial as his pictures, and nearly always they are painted in a way and with an artistic feeling which remove them from that arid region, factual portraiture. For he was ever, and in everything he did, an artist.
After coming to Edinburgh, Mr Alexander, while never being in the town, had his house and studio on the outskirts, and, for the last forty years, made his home at Hailes Cottage, near Kingsknowe, where he had facilities for keeping the animals he painted. Almost always there were dogs in the kennels, and usually a horse (for a good many years it was a white Arab) pastured in the field beyond the garden, and came galloping to meet him whenever he appeared. For while he painted and loved animals on their pictorial aspects, and made fine pictures from them, he was a knowledgeable man about dogs and a very fine judge of horses. His services were frequently in request at shows, and only three years ago, when he was eighty, he judged the ponies at the Royal Horse Show. These diverse interests brought him many and varied friends, for, if somewhat quick in temper, his was a genial and sunny nature, which revealed itself in a winning courtesy of manner and a delicate inflection and quality of speech, which, as a fellow-artist once said, reminded one of the tender greys in his pictures. This geniality and interest he kept to the last. He was painting, not regularly, but pretty frequently, up to the end, and only on Tuesday last he visited the Academy exhibition.
The merit and charm of Mr Alexander's pictures of domestic animals have been in some degree recognised; but, as it happens, there are three pictures in the Royal Scottish Academy this year, painted at considerable intervals, which suggest that it has not yet been generally realised that in him Scotland possessed not only her own best animal painter; but one of the subtlest and most accomplished painters of this genre there have ever been. To think of the pictures rather than the reputations of Rosa Bonheur and Troyon and Jacque, of Morland and Ward, Landseer and J. M. Swan, or of the 17th century Dutch painters, including the celebrated Paul Potter and the rest, and then look at those by Robert Alexander that chance has brought together in the Academy, is to have borne in on you that, in sympathetic comprehension of animal life and man's relationship to it, and as a draughtsman, a colourist, a designer, and an executant, Mr Alexander was, in his own distinctive way, the equal of any of them and the superior in certain respects of most. He had not the dramatic talent which has earned fame for some of these, or the wide range which adds interest to the work of others, and he did not possess the extraordinary power of live draughtsmanship and the spirited yet perfectly controlled command of the brush which make Crawhall's water-colours unique, but in its quieter way, in which sensitivenes of observation, delicacy of handling, subtlety of tone, and harmony of pictorial effect are so happily blended, his work took a very high place indeed. The earliest of Mr Alexander's trio is a delightful water-colour of Tangiers donkeys, in which the range of tone and tint is greater than usual with him; and the latest is an extraordinarily subtly toned, if somewhat loosely handled, study of an old white horse in a stable, painted quite recently, and instinct with all the finest and most personal qualities in his special gift. It is rather, however, to "Some Warreners," a picture painted in 1894, and therefore to be counted a central work, in his career, that attention should be given in the comparison suggested. Here we have a picture of dogs—a group of Dandie Dinmont terriers gathered beside in old wicker game hamper, on the top of which dead rabbits lie, and with some sporting paraphernalia in the foreground of trampled grass and warm grey earth—which in its wonderful rendering of doggie character, its expressive drawing and brush-work, its beauty of delicately muted colour and tone, and its complete pictorial unity could scarcely be surpassed.
Mr Alexander was twice married, and is survived by his second wife and a family of four sons, and two daughters. The eldest son, Mr Edwin Alexander, R.S.A., is also a well-known artist; the second is an officer in the Cunard Line, and commanded a destroyer with distinction during the war; and the younger daughter was married to the late Mr Alexander Roche, R.S.A.

Hope that’s useful,
Alan

[Robbie Alexander]

Robert Alexander was my great grandfather. He had 5 children by his first wife, Sarah Jennings namely Marion, Milly, Ann, Edwin & Jennie.

He had 4 by his second, Jemima Martin, namely Robert (my grandfather), James, Edward (Martin) and Jean.

Hope this helps.

Robbie Alexander