Alexander Grant

Cosmo Alexander painted Alexander Grant in 1770, during the period when this Scottish-born painter was working in the American colonies. Alexander had trained in Italy and worked in Britain before emigrating to America, where he became one of the most significant portraitists on the eastern seaboard in the years immediately before the Revolution. His sitters included prominent colonial figures, and his influence extended to his most famous pupil, the young Gilbert Stuart. The portrait of Alexander Grant exemplifies the transatlantic circulation of artistic training and portrait conventions that characterized mid-18th-century British colonial culture: the poses, the powdered wigs, the formal dress code, and the compositional formulas all derive from metropolitan British practice, transplanted to American soil where they served new social purposes for a colonial elite constructing its own sense of worth.

Alexander's training in the British tradition is evident in the confident handling of the three-quarter pose and the careful differentiation between the illuminated face and the darker costume. The paint surface is smooth and competent, the flesh modeling showing a knowledge of the Kneller and Hudson traditions from which much colonial American portraiture descended.