Up to 1890 his work had hardly so much as suggested his later bent or method. The “Head of a Boy” and “Sketch of a Boy,” shown in a recent memorial exhibition at the Century Club, are both of them early efforts done at Polling. They are in the dark Munich style of Duveneck and not unlike things that Shirlaw and Chase were doing a few years earlier. “Old Cole” in the same exhibition, done in 1881, again indicates Munich teaching. The lights are surrounded by darks and the darks are darkened by bitumen. There is no attempt at fine color or decorative pattern, but rather a desire for the realistic largeness of the model with a resultant brusque modelling and some dragging of a heavily loaded brush. The portrait of “Thurlow Weed” gives a big strong head relieved by being in high light and again surrounded by darks. One might think from a casual glance that it had been inspired by Lenbach. The portrait of “Jefferson as Bob Acres,” while it still shows Munich methods, is something of a departure. It is a costume and footlight portrait with the lights very high, the shadows pronounced, the color very gay. It was well set, well drawn, easily painted upon ordinary canvas, and in the usual oil medium. The portrait had spirit and life about it and yet gave small indication of what Alexander’s style would ultimately become. Just so with the rather fine portrait of “Walt Whitman,” now in the Metropolitan Museum. The hark back to Lenbach in the insistent relief of the head and hands as spots of white surrounded by dark is quite apparent. Perhaps here there is a pose of the figure and a sweep of the beard that suggest Alexander’s later swing and swirl of lines, but it is not very marked. This work, done for the most part before he was thirty, was talked about and praised in New York art circles, but it was really Paris that gave Alexander rank. He had been married in 1887 to Miss Elizabeth Alexander, and in 1890 they went abroad for a few months that he might recuperate from an attack of the grippe. They remained away eleven years. The time was spent chiefly in Paris, and it was to the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts that he sent, in 1893, three portraits that made a decided hit. They were entitled “Portrait Gris,” “Portrait Noir,” and “Portrait Jaune.” The titles suggest color schemes, qualities of tone, garments arranged gracefully to fill space and make a decorative pattern--in short, the things that thereafter gave individuality to Alexander’s art. Paris immediately took notice of them; the Société elected him an associate member, and the next year, when he sent a panel of five portraits, he was elected a full member. His reputation and his commissions from that time increased rapidly. He was a success.