Rachel Frances Alexander (13 May 1875 - 8 December 1964) was a social campaigner in Kensington, London. She was involved in the foundation of several charities in the borough including, the Kensington Housing Trust, the Kensington Council of Social Service and the North Kensington Community Centre. Her father William Cleverly Alexander was an early supporter of the painter James McNeill Whistler, who painted two of her elder sisters. Rachel herself was painted by the artist William Nicholson and she and her younger sister Jean donated seventeen paintings from their father's art collection to the National Gallery and pieces of his Japanese collection to the Victoria and Albert (now housed in the British Museum).
Rachel Alexander was born on the 13th May 1875 in Kensington, London. [1] She was the second youngest of nine children. [2] [3] Her father William Cleverly Alexander (1840-1916) was a banker in the City of London [4] and worked for his family’s firm Alexanders and Co. (later Alexander’s Discount Co. Ltd). [5] William Cleverly and his wife Rachel Agnes Alexander (née Lucas, 1837-1900) were supporters of the arts and early supporters of James McNeill Whistler in England. Whistler painted two of her sisters:
Whistler also did sketches for another sister, Portrait of Miss Grace Alexander (1873/1876, which were held by the British Museum) [8] as well as advised on redecorating three rooms at the family home Aubrey House in Kensington. [9]
Alexander lived in Aubrey House [10] her whole life and was active in the local community. In 1909 she was the Honorary Secretary of the North Kensington Dispensary for the Prevention of Consumption. [11] In 1917 she and her sisters donated a substantial number of their late father’s Japanese collection to the Victoria and Albert Museum [12] now housed in the British Museum. [13] The family also contributed Aubrey House to the war effort during World War I. The house became a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) hospital for recuperating soldiers and was returned to the sisters after the war. [14] [15] Alexander's work in the war could have also been more direct as the notice of her death in the Kensington News and West London Times in 1964 states, "In the First World War she [Rachel] worked with the [Society of] Friends in France, and received a medal from the French government for her work there." [16] In 1926 she was a founding member of the Kensington Housing Trust [17] and she was elected to the Council of the Society that same year. Her involvement lasted until her death in 1964. [18]
In 1867 Aubrey House, under the prior owners Peter and Clementia Taylor, was the scene of the first meeting of the Committee of the London National Society for Women’s Suffrage. [19] Dame Millicent Fawcett (1847-1929) became a member of the Society’s executive committee that year, aged 19. [20] Much later in 1925 and again in 1927, when Alexander and her sister Jean Ingelow Alexander (1877-1972) (the "Misses Alexanders") owned the house, Dame Millicent Fawcett returned as part of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship and spoke at two large gatherings held in the garden at Aubrey House. [21] [22] In 1929 the sisters also hosted a reception for the Women’s International League for "two women delegates of the British Government to the Geneva Assembly". [23] Their garden and home were frequently opened to raise money for local charities. [24]
Alexander was greatly involved in local issues in Kensington and was a founding member of the Kensington Council of Social Service in 1920. [25] In 1935 she was instrumental in opening a nursery school for 40 children at the Housing Estate in Dalgarno Gardens. [26] She also helped to found a Community Centre in Kensington in 1936, which celebrated her on its 21st year anniversary in 1957, when she was 80. [27] In 1948 she was the inspiration for opening Ray House, a home for the elderly in Kensington and in 1951 she was also Secretary of the Kensington Holiday Trust. [28] [29]
Alexander's father commissioned William Nicholson to paint a portrait of her when she was 30. The painting was done in 1905 at Bolton Studios, Chelsea and is very large, measuring 67 x 51 inches (170.2 x 129.5 cm). [30] It was exhibited as No. 123 in the 1907 International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers (London) exhibition in New Gallery, Regent Street, London. [31] The background of the painting contains a large drawing of a woman on horseback (who could be the sitter herself). [32] [33] Rachel owned the painting through at least 1956, when she is cited as the owner by Lillian Browse in her book William Nicholson .
According to Patricia Reed's William Nicholson: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil Paintings, William Cleverly Alexander also owned several other paintings by William Nicholson: La Petite Marchande (The Little Shopkeeper, 1902), Deer in Blenheim Park (1903), Whiteways - Rottingdean (1909), Saltdean, Rottingdean (1909), Fuchsias in a Blue and White Jug (1909), Purple Tulips (1911) and Cupids Fighting for a Rose (1910). [34] He may also have owned Still Life (1907) and Clifftop: Rottingdean by Moonlight (1910) as these were cited as belonging to him in a 1990 exhibition catalogue [35] produced by the National Portrait Gallery, London, but cited by Reed as being owned by his son, Geoffrey Alexander in 1910-1911. (William Gregory Alexander died in 1911.)
Rachel Alexander also had her silhouette cut by the well known silhouette artist Hubert Leslie . It was done in 1923 on the West Pier in Brighton and is held by the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Alexander died in December 1964 and her younger sister Jean died in 1972. [36] However, in 1959 the sisters had signed a Deed of Gift with the National Gallery, so in 1972 after Jean passed away, seventeen paintings from their family were gifted to the nation, most of which still reside at the National Gallery in London. [37] [38]
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American painter in oils and watercolor, and printmaker, active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake".
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a child prodigy who, aged eleven, became the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded at his family home in London, at 83 Gower Street. Millais became the most famous exponent of the style, his painting Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50) generating considerable controversy, and he produced a picture that could serve as the embodiment of the historical and naturalist focus of the group, Ophelia, in 1851–52.
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, was an English painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's style and subject matter.
Alphonse Legros was a French, later British, painter, etcher, sculptor, and medallist. He moved to London in 1863 and later was naturalized as British. He was important as a teacher in the British etching revival.
Sir William Newzam Prior Nicholson was a British painter of still-life, landscape and portraits. He also worked as a printmaker in techniques including woodcut, wood-engraving and lithography, as an illustrator, as an author of children's books and as a designer for the theatre.
James Ferrier Pryde was a British artist. A number of his paintings are in public collections, but there have been few exhibitions of his work. He is principally remembered as one of the Beggarstaffs, his artistic partnership with William Nicholson, and for the poster designs and other graphic work they made between 1893 and 1899, which influenced graphic design for many years.
John Christopher "Kit" Wood was an English painter born in Knowsley, near Liverpool.
Sir Alan Bowness CBE was a British art historian, art critic, and museum director. He was the director of the Tate Gallery between 1980 and 1988.
Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in England, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. Founded by Sir Henry Tate, it houses a substantial collection of the art of the United Kingdom since Tudor times, and in particular has large holdings of the works of J. M. W. Turner, who bequeathed all his own collection to the nation. It is one of the largest museums in the country. The museum had 525,144 visitors in 2021, an increase of 34 percent from 2020 but still well below pre- COVID-19 pandemic levels. In 2021 it ranked 50th on the list of most-visited art museums in the world.
Louise Jane Jopling was an English painter of the Victorian era, and one of the most prominent female artists of her generation.
Completed in 1871, Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea is a painting by James McNeill Whistler. It is the earliest of the London Nocturnes and was conceived on the same August evening as Variations in Violet and Green. The two paintings were exhibited together at the Dudley Gallery.
Elizabeth Adela Forbes was a Canadian painter who was primarily active in the UK. She often featured children in her paintings and School Is Out is one of her most popular works. She was friends with the artists James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Walter Sickert, both of whom influenced her work. Her etchings in particular are said to show the influence of Whistler.
Eileen Forrester Agar was an Argentine-British painter and photographer associated with the Surrealist movement.
Mabel Scott Lauder Pryde was a Scottish artist, the wife of artist William Nicholson, and the mother of artists Ben Nicholson and Nancy Nicholson and the architect Christopher Nicholson.
Georgiana, Lady Burne-Jones was a British painter and engraver, and the second oldest of the MacDonald sisters. She was married to the Late Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, and was also the mother of painter Philip Burne-Jones, aunt of novelist Rudyard Kipling and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, confidante and friend of George Eliot, William Morris, and John Ruskin. She was a Trustee of the South London Gallery and was elected to the parish Council of Rottingdean, near Brighton in Sussex.
Aubrey House is a large 18th-century detached house with two acres of gardens in the Campden Hill area of Holland Park in west London, W8. It is a private residence.
Mother of Pearl and Silver: The Andalusian is a painting by James McNeill Whistler. The work shows a woman in full figure standing with her back to the viewer, with her head in profile. The model is Ethel Whibley, the artist's secretary and sister-in-law.
Theodore Casimir Roussel (1847–1926) was a French-born English painter and graphic artist, best known for his landscapes and genre scenes.
Beatrice Whistler was born in Chelsea, London on 12 May 1857. She was the eldest daughter of ten children of the sculptor John Birnie Philip and Frances Black. She studied art in her father's studio and with Edward William Godwin who was an architect-designer. On 4 January 1876 she became the second wife of Edward Godwin. Following the death of Godwin, Beatrice married James McNeill Whistler on 11 August 1888.
Rosalind Birnie Philip was the sister-in-law of James McNeill Whistler. After the death of her sister Beatrice in 1896 Rosalind acted as secretary to Whistler and was appointed Whistler's sole beneficiary and the executrix in his will.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite news}}
: Missing or empty |title=
(help)