Alexander Roche
Alexander Ignatius Roche (born August 17, 1863 in Glasgow , † March 10, 1921 in Edinburgh ) was a Scottish late Impressionist painter and member of the Glasgow Boys , an artist group from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
life and work
Alexander Roche, born in 1863 as the son of a hatter, attended St Mungo's Academy. He then began training as an architect in an architecture firm, but did not complete it. He also took some courses at the Glasgow School of Art . In 1881 he went to Paris and attended the Académie Julian , where he was taught by Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre . He later enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts , where he was a student of Jean-Léon Gérôme . During his stay in Paris he met other Scottish artists, including John Lavery , Thomas Millie Dow , William Stott and William Kennedy . They painted together, influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage and the open-air painters , near Grez-sur-Loing, south of Fontainebleau .
In 1885 he returned to Scotland and initially settled in Glasgow as a freelance artist. He painted romantic idylls with girls in gardens, interiors and landscapes. One of these paintings, The Dominie's Favorites , was exhibited at the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in 1885 and was awarded the high price of £ 250. Roche moved into a cottage on the banks of the Luggie River in East Dunbartonshire near Edinburgh and painted some of his best landscapes there. A well-known image from this period is The Shepherd . He was elected a member of the Glasgow Art Club and soon became a well-known member of the Glasgow Boys .
In 1888 he spent most of his time in Capri , where he was in contact with an international group of artists, including Fabio Fabbi and Harold Speed . On two further trips to Italy in the early 1890s, which took him to Florence and Venice , he painted numerous genre scenes and portraits of locals such as A Sabine Woman and Italian Peasant Girl . In Florence he married an Italian girl. But the connection was not permanent. Roche also spent some time in the United States . There he painted Andrew Carnegie , one of the richest people in the world at the time, and his wife Louise and daughter Margaret.
In 1891 Roche was awarded a gold medal in Munich and accepted into the New English Art Club . In 1892 he received recognition from the Salon de Paris . In 1894 the Royal Scottish Academy selected Roche as an “Associate” and six years later accepted him as a full member. In 1896 Roche moved to Edinburgh and painted a number of portraits , which suited his style of painting very well. In later years portrait painting became his main source of income. In 1897 he was awarded a gold medal in Dresden . His paintings were also shown regularly at the Royal Academy of Arts in London between 1890 and 1919 . In 1898 he became a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters . The Grosvenor Gallery in London, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and the Manchester City Art Gallery also exhibited his work.
In 1906 Roche married Jean Alexander, the daughter of the painter Robert Alexander and sister of Edwin Alexander , who was also a painter. All four were on friendly terms with Joseph Crawhall , a member of the Glasgow Boys with whom they shared a fondness for Tangier , Morocco . The couple lived in Edinburgh at Royal Terrace 8 from 1907 to 1914. During this time he suffered a cerebral haemorrhage , as a result of which his right hand was paralyzed. He learned to paint with his left hand and was as skilled as before with his right hand. Eventually the couple bought a cottage in Slateford on the Water of Leith, southwest of Edinburgh, where Roche died in 1921 at the age of 59.
Works (selection)
- The Dominie's Favorites (1885)
- The Shepherd (1886)
- The Idyll (1892)
- A Sabine Woman (1894)
- Italian peasant girl
- The Looking Glass
- The Harbor, St. Monance
- Portrait of Flora Stevenson (1904)
literature
- David Martin: The Glasgow school of painting. George Bell Books, London 1897.
- Richard Muther: History of English Painting. Fischer, Berlin 1903.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Roche, Alexander |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Roche, Alexander Ignatius (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Scottish painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 17th August 1863 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Glasgow |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 10, 1921 |
| Place of death | Edinburgh |