This is one of several interior
scenes in which Alexander showed people at work, surrounded by their equipment.
The portrait d’apparat—an image in which a figure appears along with objects
associated with his or her daily life—reflects Alexander’s training in the
Munich academy of fine arts and showcases his skills both as a portraitist and
as a still-life painter. His subject here is the chemist and assayer Thomas
Price (1837–1912), and the setting is Price’s San Francisco laboratory. A
consultant to international mining companies, Price was noted for his practical
and theoretical knowledge of metals and mines.
Henry Alexander (1860 – May 15,
1894) was a painter from California. Aside from a few trompe-l'oeil paintings,
his paintings generally depict individuals within highly detailed interiors. He
is especially known for his paintings of men in cluttered offices filled with
business furnishings or laboratory equipment, such as his several paintings of
the mineralogist Thomas Price. He also painted Chinese and Japanese subjects.
He left San Francisco for New
York City on April 15, 1887, in order to be at the center of the art world, but
he suffered from money troubles and alcoholism. He had a studio at 51 West
Tenth Street. The other artists in the building avoided him, because he was
always trying to borrow money.
Alexander's work attracted enough
notice that the New York Herald described him as one of the creators of the
modern school of art. On May 15, 1894, his money troubles led him to commit
suicide by swallowing oxalic acid in the Oriental Hotel at Broadway and
Thirty-Ninth Street. Many of his works were destroyed in the San Francisco
earthquake of 1906.
