William Alexander (painter, 1767)

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William Alexander
(self-portrait, around 1793)

William Alexander (born April 10, 1767 in Maidstone , Kent ; † July 23, 1816 there ) was a British watercolor painter , draftsman , etcher and illustrator . From 1792–1794 he accompanied the Macartney mission to the Chinese imperial court and created numerous depictions of Chinese culture and society .

life and work

Youth and education

William Alexander was one of four children of the carriage builder Harry Alexander from Maidstone in Kent in south-east England. He attended Maidstone Grammar School . In 1782, the fifteen-year-old was selected for artistic training because of his talent and sent to London . He initially trained with the painter William Parrs , then with Julius Caesar Ibbetson . In 1784 he became a student at the Royal Academy Schools . The royal court painter and President of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds , became his sponsor.

Trip to china

“The arrival of the emperor of China at his tent in Tatarei to receive the British ambassador”, 1793.
William Alexander himself was not present at the audience, but had to stay in Beijing.

In 1792, William Alexander was hired as a draftsman for the Macartney Mission . This diplomatic mission, led by Lord Macartney and Sir George Staunton , was to go to the Chinese imperial court and convince the emperor to open his empire to trade with Britain. William Alexander was formally subordinate to his senior painter colleague Thomas Hickey on the mission ; However, this should achieve almost nothing on the way, so that all representations of the expedition were created by Alexander.

The mission's ships left England at the end of September 1792. Due to unfavorable winds, one first had to sail from Cape Verde to Rio de Janeiro before reaching the southern tip of Africa in January 1793. In March the group arrived in Batavia in the Dutch East Indies . In May they went ashore for a few days in Tourane , Vietnam, where the Tây-Sơn dynasty ruled. They arrived in Macau in June and contacted Chinese officials. Then the expedition sailed along China's coast to the north and arrived via Tientsin to Peking , where one arrived in August. The Qianlong Emperor was staying at his summer residence in Jehol (Rehe) north of the Great Wall at that time. Lord Macartney and his most important companions - but not William Alexander - consequently traveled further north and were received with great ceremonies by the emperor on September 14 as part of his birthday celebrations. Since Macartney refused to throw himself to the ground in front of the emperor in the protocol stipulated kowtow , the British request was resolutely rejected and the diplomatic mission ended as a complete failure. Although Alexander was not there, he made several representations of the imperial audience based on eyewitness accounts.

After the British received a negative imperial reply in October, the group traveled partly by land and partly on smaller boats back to Macau and set sail there in March 1794. After a stopover on St. Helena , they finally arrived in England in September 1794.

“A Chinese Lady and Her Son”,
depiction from The Costume of China , 1805
“View of Yang-tcheou ”,
depiction from The Costume of China , 1805

Politically, the whole venture had been a major failure. However, William Alexander had used the time in China and captured the country and its people in over two thousand drawings. After his return, numerous watercolors and prints were created on this basis, which were used to illustrate the travel reports that appeared in the following years. In 1797 Sir George Staunton published the official report "An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China" . The engraver Joseph Collyer converted the drawings by William Alexander into printing plates. The report was also a great commercial success in book form and translated into several languages ​​(including German).

Between 1795 and 1804, Alexander exhibited thirteen of his China watercolors at the Royal Academy.

In 1804 Sir John Barrow , who had been responsible for the bookkeeping during the expedition, published his travelogue “Travels in China” , followed in 1806 by “A Voyage to Cochin China” about the short stopover in Vietnam. Alexander contributed the colored illustrations for both works.

In addition, he published three illustrated books about the trip under his own name, the colored illustrations of which he also etched himself: "Views of Headlands, Islands, etc. taken during the Voyage to China" appeared in 1798. His second work, "The Costume of China" on Chinese clothing and fashion, followed in 1805 and became a great success. Finally, in 1814, a sequel "Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese" was published under his name - as part of a series about the costume studies and customs of various peoples, including Austrians, English, Russians and Turks. However, it is doubtful whether the qualitatively poorer representations in this last work really come from his hand.

Due to the large number and the commercial success of his works, William Alexander had a decisive influence on the British image of China in the early 19th century. More than twenty years after the trip, Alexander's depictions of China were used, for example, for the interior decoration of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton . Unlike earlier European travelers to China, he depicted the empire relatively realistically in his pictures, but at the same time as in a kind of idyllic decline. Ruins in the romantic Picturesque style decorate the background of many depictions.

Next life

The year after his return from China, William had married Alexander. His wife Jane Wogan died a little later.

In addition to the numerous depictions of China, he also took on the task of illustrating George Vancouver's travelogue “Voyage of discovery to the north Pacific Ocean, and around the world” using sketches with images. In 1800 he completed an aquatint etching showing a festival held by Lord Romney in August 1799 in honor of Kent's volunteer troops. Increasingly, he also devoted himself to local landscape painting and created a series of "picturesque" views of English landscapes and cities.

In 1802, William Alexander became professor of drawing at the newly established Royal Military College in Great Marlow . In 1808 he moved to the British Museum , where he was responsible for the collection of drawings and prints as Assistant Keeper of the Department of Antiquities . Under his leadership, the drawing of ancient ceramics and marble portraits began. Alexander created the drawings himself, the descriptions were supplemented by Taylor Combe . “A Description of the Collection of Ancient Terracottas in the British Museum” was published in 1810, followed by the first four volumes in the series “A Description of the Collection of Ancient Marbles in the British Museum” (1812, 1815, 1818, 1820).

However, William Alexander did not live to see the publication of the latter two volumes. He died of brain disease in his birthplace in 1816 at the age of 49 and was buried in Boxley Cemetery.

Some of his romantic English landscape views were posthumously included by William Turner in his compilation "Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England" published in 1826 . In 1841, a quarter of a century after William Alexander's death, his travel story "A Journey to Beresford Hall, the Seat of Charles Cotton, Esq., The Celebrated Author and Angler" was finally published as a book.

literature

Web links

Commons : William Alexander  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: William Alexander (1767–1816)  - Sources and full texts (English)

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Alexandra Loske: Shaping an image of China in the West: William Alexander (1767-1816) : “He was not allowed to join the ambassador's party on their trip to Jehol, north of Beijing, to meet the Emperor. Instead, he was confined to a building in Beijing […] However, he did produce drawings of Macartney's group meeting the Emperor at Jehol, using a combination of eyewitness reports and other artists' images. "
  2. ↑ for a detailed description of the trip, see for example Alain Peyrefitte : The Immobile Empire , Knopf, New York 1992
  3. ^ British Museum : William Alexander (Biographical details) : "Alexander made over two thousand sketches of China which were worked up into careful watercolor compositions and reproduced as prints"
  4. ↑ The German translation of the travelogue was made by fellow traveler Johann Christian Hüttner and is entitled "Journey of the English legation to the Emperor of China in the years 1792 and 1793" .
  5. ↑ The other volumes, also published in 1814, are called "Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Austrians" , "Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the English" , "Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Russians" and "Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Turks " . William Alexander is named as a draftsman for all works in the series, which is, however, questionable in view of the poor quality, cf. Alexandra Loske: Shaping an image of China in the West and Wu Hung: A Story of Ruins , p. 97.
  6. ^ Wu Hung: A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture , Reaction Books, London 2013, pp. 95-105
  7. ↑ see: British Library Online Gallery: Representation of the Dinner given by Lord Romney to the Kentish Volunteers in Presence of their Majesties and the Royal Family , William Alexander, Aquatint with etching, 1800
  8. ↑ Digital copies available at archive.org : A Description of the Collection of Ancient Terracottas in the British Museum; with engravings , 1810 and A Description of the Collection of Ancient Marbles in the British Museum, Part 1 , 1812
  9. ↑ see: Tate Gallery : Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England, 1814–26
  10. ↑ Digitalis available at archive.org: William Alexander: A Journey to Beresford Hall, the Seat of Charles Cotton, Esq., The Celebrated Author and Angler , 1841
personal data
SURNAME Alexander, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British watercolor painter, draftsman, eraser, illustrator and traveler to China
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1767
PLACE OF BIRTH Maidstone , Kent
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1816
Place of death Maidstone , Kent