Arts and Letters

I have a treasure that hangs above the fireplace in my home in Princeton. It is a painting of a little girl sitting in a Victorian "ladies" chair. Her legs, too short to bend at the knees, stick straight forward with all the awkward charm of childhood. The little girl's name is Belinda. She is one of the two children of Peggy Bacon and Alexander Brook. I think it is one of Alex's best paintings.

I met Alex in 1918 at the Art Students League in New York immediately after World War I. I was tired of my way of painting and wanted to get back to work with Kenneth Hayes Miller, who had helped me so much in the past.

The old yellow building where the classes were held looked the same from the outside as it had before the war, but inside there had been radical changes. Kenneth Miller's life-class now included women as well as men. The change had come about during the war when there had not been enough men to fill the class.

Alexander Brook was the monitor of the class. He was a young man with a sharp nose, roughed-up auburn hair, and a decided limp. His job was to select women of sufficient talent to fill the gaps in the class. Judging from my experience, I'm not so sure about the selection process, for I was lucky to be a friend of Peggy Bacon, whom he married not much later. Peg presented me to Alex as a possible addition to the class. He looked at me, did not look at the work I had brought with me, then looked at Peg, raised his eye-brows, nodded his head. I was in. This was the beginning of a new period in my life. Alexander Brook was part of it.

There were many talents joining, leaving, and rejoining that class over the years. Reggie Marsh and Isabel Bishop were two who came later. Lloyd Goodrich stayed for a time, before he decided that writing about artists was what he really wanted to do.

Ed Duffy, later political cartoonist for the Baltimore Sun, wandered in and out, as did Louis Bouché. Pink and white Peggy Bacon, with her sweet smile and marvelous venomous pen, added color. David Morrison, a serious minister, took three mornings a week from his pastoral duties to attend. But the two glittering talents at the time were Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Alexander Brook. Their talents seemed full blown from the beginning.

I know that for Alex, the world of color had been opened in childhood by a severe attack of polio. To help him forget the pain and frustration, his parents gave him wax crayons and yellow paper. It did more than distract him; it started him on his way as an artist.

Alexander Brook was in his early twenties when I knew him best. These were the days of the open show when new artists had an opportunity to show their work in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Venice….

Alex loved to paint children and women, and he eventually attracted the Hollywood stars, whom he painted on commission.

One of his first successes was a portrait of Amy Charak. She owned a beautiful couch that he coveted, and they decided to swap: he would paint her portrait for the couch. She settled down for a long siege of posing, but to her surprise, after three days Alex turned the canvas around, asking "Want to see?" And there was a most beautiful painting done like the old masters: a firm underpainting covered with a glowing transparent glaze.

One of the celebrities he painted was Katharine Hepburn. It is characteristic of Alex that what fascinated him was the fact that her upper lip was identical to her lower lip.

Alex's output was prolific, and his reputation grew rapidly. He was successful for a long period. An enormous number of his works won awards and are in museums and private collections. Then there was a fly in the ointment: the growing acceptance of non-objective art disturbed him greatly. He did not understand its success, and perhaps this paragraph from a letter his son Sandy wrote me helps to explain why.

He was interested in the commonplace as it were, by the enjoyment he found in it, the things that moved him, things that he could tell people about in paint…. The surroundings of his home, the anecdotes, his love of special clothes, cars, objects, interesting faces was what he brought to his paintings….

Alex married Gina Knee in 1945, and many of the last years of his life with her were spent improving their beautiful home in Sag Harbor. One of my happiest recollections of Alex's flair in these later years was the decoration on the bed in the guest room at Sag Harbor. Guests were treated to an enchanting example of Alex's humor, versatile talent, and skill. As one lay in bed, quantities of charming little people looked up at the guest. When the curious guest got up for a closer look, he found the backs of the same little people bending over to look through the footboard.

Sensitive, humorous and loyal to the things he believed in, this was the Alexander Brook I knew.