Alexander John Drysdale (1870-1934)

Back in New Orleans, Drysdale was inspired by local subjects, especially swamp or bayou areas and other desolate wetlands. Over a period of many years Drysdale's landscapes evolved to a unique stylistic maturity. In 1909 he received a gold medal from the New Orleans Art Association. It is easy to see the influence of two artists that he admired: Corot and Inness. Working equally well in oil and watercolor (he also did scenes in charcoal), Drysdale usually divided his scene into halves or thirds, typically, a foreground consisting of tall swamp grasses achieved with broad vertical strokes; a middle ground consisting of a backdrop row of trees at the horizon line executed with staccato, jabbing strokes resulting in textural contrast; and a background devoted totally to a tonalist-like moisture-laden sky often hazy with no clouds or only a slight indication of them. This formulaic compositional format rendered with an economy of technique resulted in imagery with repetitious forms and shapes diffused in a nebulous space. In this regard, Drysdale's works are impressionistic; he also tended to use the violets and blues of the impressionist palette. Yet he lacked a specific interest in color and light. Although his expression of the Louisiana scenery is very personal, even mystical, the artist appears to have been very limited in subject matter. One of his last works was a mural for the Shushan (New York) Airport administration building, and shortly before his death he was employed as an artist by the Civil Works Administration.

Drysdale was a member of the Arts and Crafts Club of New Orleans, and his work was in the permanent collection of the Delgado Museum for many years. The artist worked at his studio at 320 Exchange Place in the picturesque Vieux Carré until his death at the age of sixty-three. Stewart (in Painting in the South, 1983), describes how Drysdale was a shrewd businessman. He would solicit new homeowners who might need a canvas to decorate a wall, or a cotton broker who recently made the headlines. Drysdale died in New Orleans, on February 9, 1934.

Sources:
Louisiana Artists from the Collection of Dr. and Mrs. James W. Nelson. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University, 1968; Wiesendanger, Martin and Margaret Wiesendanger, Nineteenth Century Louisiana Painters and Paintings from the Collection of W. E. Groves. New Orleans: W. E. Groves Gallery, 1971, pp. 44-45; Painting in the South: 1584-1980, Exh. cat. Richmond, VA: Virginia Museum, 1983, pp. 106-107, 114, 276; Chambers, Bruce W., Art and Artists of the South: The Robert P. Coggins Collection of American Paintings. Exh. cat. Rochester, NY: Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, 1984, p. 88; Zellman, Michael David, 300 Years of American Art. Seacacus, NJ: Wellfleet Press, 1987, p. 634; Gerdts, William H., Art across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting, 1710-1920. New York: Abbeville Press, 1990, vol. 2, pp. 110-111.

Submitted by Richard H. Love and Michael Preston Worley, Ph.D.

ALEXANDER JOHN DRYSDALE (1870–1934)

Born in Marietta, Georgia, Alexander John Drysdale was the only son of an ordained Episcopal priest whose ministry required frequent moves to parishes in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. In 1883, he accepted the call to become dean of Christ Church Cathedral, New Orleans, and was later elected a bishop. Alexander, thirteen years old when the family settled in New Orleans, began his art studies under the instruction of Ida C. Haskell, a California-born artist who was on the faculty of the recently established Southern Art Union. The local academy had been founded by several leading artists, including Andres Molinary, William Henry Buck, Marshall J. Smith, and Paul Poincy. As early as 1889, Drysdale exhibited at the Artists’ Association of New Orleans, earning a reputation as a painter of “landscape scenes of the highest order.” All the while—and especially after the unexpected death of his father—Drysdale worked as a bookkeeper and banker to support his widowed mother and sisters. Buoyed by his success in local exhibitions, Drysdale, now thirty-one years old, left Louisiana in 1901 to pursue advanced art studies in New York City.

Enrolling at the Art Students League, Drysdale took classes from esteemed artists—including Charles Courtney Curran and Frank Vincent DuMond—and was exposed to the Impressionist aesthetic of William Merritt Chase. During his three years in New York, he continued to submit work to exhibitions in New Orleans. He also befriended fellow pupil Helen Turner, whose career would far eclipse his own. Drysdale returned to New Orleans in 1903 and opened a studio, initially advertising himself as a portrait painter, though landscapes remained his subject of choice. In 1909, he was awarded a gold medal by the Artists’ Association, securing his place in the local art scene.

Drysdale’s personal expression as an artist spring from his creation of a highly idiosyncratic medium. He thinned oil paints with kerosene to create a wash—not unlike watercolor—which he applied to a very porous artist board. In a tactic that surely increased his productivity, he employed not only a brush, but also used cotton balls dipped in the color wash as a tool for daubing pigment onto the surface. Kerosene has a rapid evaporation factor which, combined with the viscosity of its petroleum base, gave these works precisely that moist and humid glow he sought to express the light and environment of the Louisiana bayous. Having developed and perfected this trademark technique, Drysdale was prolific. Some accounts estimate that he created ten thousand works of art over the course of his career, paintings once described as “misty blue and green landscapes seen through tears or soft rainfall.”

The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina
thejohnsoncollection.org