1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alexander, Francis

ALEXANDER, FRANCIS (1800–1881), American portrait-painter, was born in Windham county, Connecticut, in February 1800. Brought up on a farm, he taught himself the use of colours, and in 1820 went to New York City and studied painting with Alexander Robertson. He spent the winters of 1831 and 1832 in Rome, and then for nearly a decade he lived in Boston, Massachusetts, where he had considerable vogue, and where in 1842 he painted a portrait of Charles Dickens. One of his best portraits is that of Mrs Fletcher Webster in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He died in 1881 in Florence.