Alexander Bower (American, 1875-1952)

Alexander Bower was born in Manhattan, New York in 1875. He was an American Impressionist painter, museum director and designer. Bower studied at the Ecole de la Grand Chaumiere and later at the Academie Julien in Paris in 1906. He also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art with Thomas Anshutz, as well as at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. Despite his urban upbringing, the coast and the sea fascinated Bower and he was living with his wife in Cliff Island, Maine by 1914. A large portion of his paintings are seascapes, particularly scenes depicting the coast of Cape Elizabeth and Cliff Island, Maine. Bower was a member of the Salmagundi Club, the American Watercolor Society, the Philadelphia Watercolor Club, and the Boston Society of Watercolor Painters, as well as being an associate member of the National Academy of Design. Bower exhibited extensively in Paris at the Salon des Independants. Later he showed in Brussels, Boreaux, Cannes and throughout Switzerland. In the United States he exhibited at the Carnegie Institute, the National Academy of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Bower was not only a painter but also the Director of the Sweat Memorial Art Museum and Director of the School of Fine and Applied Art (both in Portland, Maine), a trustee at Westbrook College in Portland, Maine, and an art instructor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.
Bower’s paintings are in many private and public collections including:

University of Nebraska
Dallas Museum of Art
Springfield Art Museum, Missouri
Butler Art Institute of American Art
Sweat Memorial Art Museum
Portland Museum of Art
Farnsworth Art Museum
Wright Museum of Art
Michelle and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Art
Sheldon Museum of Art