biography of Alexander POPE (1849-1924)

Birth place: Boston, MA

Addresses: Boston, Brookline, MA/Hingham, MA

Profession: Still-life and portrait painter, sculptor

Studied: Wm. Rimmer.

Exhibited: Boston AC, 1875-77, 1880, 1889-98; AIC; PAFA Ann., 1919

Member: Copley S., 1893; Boston AC.

Work: Brooklyn Mus.; M.H. de Young Mus; PAFA

Comments: Painter of animal subjects (also sculptures) and still life. During the 1860s-70s, Pope worked in his father"s lumber business. In 1875, he began to exhibit his carved and painted wood trophies of live and dead game birds. He became well known as an animal portraitist, painting famous horses and champion dogs and cats. During the late 1880s, he turned to painting large trompe l'oeil still lifes (hunting pictures and compositions of military paraphernelia), and is considered Boston"s leading representative of that school. He also painted trompe l'oeil pictures showing dogs, chickens, even lions, enclosed within a wooden crate covered with chicken wire or a cage. After 1912, he was chiefly a portrait painter of people and their animals. He published two portfolios of lithographs entitled Upland Game Birds and Water Fowl of the United States and Celebrated Dogs of America.

Sources: WW24; Baigell, Dictionary; Alfred Frankenstein, After the Hunt, 67, 139-41; Gerdts, Painters of the Humble Truth, 153, 157, 193, 196; Gerdts and Burke, American Still-Life Painting,133-34, 142; Falk, Exh. Record Series; add"l info. courtesy Janice Chadbourne, Boston Pub. Lib.