Chisholm Gallery

Pope Jr., Alexander

American, (1849-1924)

Alexander Pope, Jr. was an American artist, both in paint and wood carving, mostly of sporting and still life subjects. He was born on March 25, 1849 in Dorchester, Massachusetts and died on September 1924, in Boston, Massachusetts. He studied for a short time under William Copley, and was one of America’s popular gaming artists.

He was a member of the Copley Art Association of Boston in the Late 19th century. As a youth, Alexander Pope carved and sketched animals around his home in Massachusetts. In the 1860s, he worked for his family’s lumber business. Pope studied carving, painting, perspective, and anatomy with William Rimmer, an important romantic-baroque sculptor, painter, and influential teacher of many Boston artists. He published two sets of chromolithograph versions of his watercolour paintings: Upland Game Birds and Water Fowl of the United States (1878), and Celebrated Dogs of America (1882).

From 1879 to 1883, Pope created many well-received carvings of game; Czar Alexander III of Russia acquired two of the carvings. In 1893, Pope began painting animal portraits and, later, pursued a career as a portrait painter. He also painted trompe l’oeil works.

Pope’s work is in many private collections and museums, including the M.H. De Young Memorial Museum and the National Museum of Wildlife Art.