Alexander Christie (1901-1946) was a Scottish artist who specialised in portraiture, working mainly in oil or charcoal, occasionally in pastel. He was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy and the Royal Scottish Academy.
Early life
Christie was born at Aberdeen in 1901 and educated at Robert Gordon's College. Having studied and commenced practice in dentistry, he abandoned that profession in order to train as an artist. He obtained admission to Gray's School of Art and in 1925 was awarded the Robert Brough Memorial Scholarship and enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools. In the following year he was elected a full professional member of the Aberdeen Art Union and used the funds from a travelling scholarship (awarded by Robert Gordon's College) to spend a year in Spain.
His versatility as an artist was recognised by his Brough Scholarship testimonial, which referred to his "remarkable ability in figure, landscape and still life", but he showed an early preference for figure painting and portraiture, and during his study in Spain he gave particular attention to the Prado's portrait collection. His early work was nevertheless diverse in range and style, and one critic, commenting on examples displayed at the Aberdeen Artists' Society centenary exhibition in 1929, found his portraits less pleasing than his "almost Sargent-like studies of Spain".. In the same year his "clever" portrait of Mrs Rose, exhibited at the Royal Academy, caught the attention of John Malcolm Bulloch, who predicted that "much more will be heard" of Christie.
Settlement in London and first subjects there
After a brief pupillage in the Cromwell Road studio of his fellow Aberdonian George Fiddes Watt, Christie began working there as an independent principal in 1929. Watt admired his ability rapidly to capture facial likeness and expression, and was instrumental in arranging for Charles Purdom to use some of Christie's quick charcoal portraits as illustrations on the cover of Everyman magazine, bringing his work to public notice. These portraits, drawn in a single sitting of between ten minutes and an hour, included studies of Beverley Nichols, Godfrey Winn, Sir Thomas Beecham and John Gielgud (pictured in the role of Hamlet). A more substantial study from this early period was his oil portrait of the American playwright Garland Anderson.
In 1930 he acquired his own studio at 37 Holland Park Road, where one of his first portrait subjects was Eileen, Duchess of Sutherland, previously painted by such masters as Sargent and Philip de László. Christie's full-length image of her, a "swift almost sketch-like study, vivid alike in colour and impression", was notable for the unusual effects of firelight on the Duchess's gown. An uncommissioned piece, it was bought by the Duke to hang in the couple's London home.
Christie's other early subjects included Admiral Sir Reginald Tupper, his charcoal drawing of whom was accepted for the Imperial War Museum's permanent collection, and the Scottish Nationalist politician Cunninghame Graham. When exhibited at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in 1931, Christie's "vividly recorded and exquisitely toned portrait" of the latter was said to reveal the young painter's "leap to maturity" (whereas Sir John Lavery's adjacent portrayal of the same sitter was considered "not to do exactly what was intended").
Importance of colour in his early work
The intensity of colour in Christie's paintings, as exemplified in "The Laughing Amazon" ("a dazzling bronzed beauty with rippling gold hair, blue eyes, gleaming white teeth, and a vivid red shawl about her shoulders"), was a feature of his early work and attracted particular comment when the Amazon was exhibited alongside de Laszlo's contrasting portrait of the Duchess of Kent ("a slightly pensive beauty with clear, brown eyes and soft, brown hair") at the Royal Scottish Academy.
It was this vibrancy of colour that induced London's Lord Mayor, Sir Percy Greenaway (who saw the Amazon displayed in the Perrin Gallery at Leighton House soon after the picture was painted in 1933), to commission his own portrait from Christie. Perhaps predictably, it was the richness of colour in Christie's study of Greenaway that was particularly admired when (together with his charcoal of Sir John Reith) it was shown at the Aberdeen Artists' Society exhibition of 1935.
