Alexander Harrison was educated in the Philadelphia suburb of Germantown, where his family lived for a number of years. After a short period of work for his father, a civil engineer and merchant, he briefly studied art in Philadelphia, then took a job, at age nineteen, with the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. For several years, he worked along the New England and Florida shores as well as on the Pacific Northwest coast. Leaving his job in Seattle in 1877, he spent a year and a half at the San Francisco School of Design before embarking for Paris in the spring of 1879.
Harrison studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, but he also spent time at the artists' colony in Pont-Aven, Brittany. Soon he became the acknowledged leader of the Americans at that rugged seaside resort. In 1881 he met and became a close friend of Jules Bastien-Lepage, who encouraged him to experiment with plein-air painting. After the Salon exhibition of Harrison's celebrated In Arcadia (1885, Palais de Tokyo, Paris), which was purchased by the French government, he moved to the forefront among artists who were investigating bright outdoor light and the relationship of figures to landscape. At the same time, he began his long series of marine subjects, predominantly nocturnal beach scenes.
Despite his international reputation, and his election to the Society of American Artists in 1885, the Academy seems to have been slow to invite him to join its ranks, probably because he lived in France and infrequently submitted work to Academy annuals. In 1898, the year he was elected an Associate, he also made a lengthy stay in America.
In later years he taught winter classes in Paris and spent time in New Hope, Pennsylvania. He also traveled to North Africa. A joint exhibition of work by Harrison and his brother Birge was presented at the City Art Museum of Saint Louis in 1913.
JD
