COSMO ALEXANDER | Portrait of a young man at his writing desk

Although traditionally called a self-portrait, the physiognomy of the present sitter does not correspond with the self-portrait currently in the Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums, where the artist is depicted with his palette (inv. no. ABDAG000025). Following the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, Cosmo Alexander fled to Italy, where he studied the Old Masters and painted members of the Scottish community. Together with his father, Cosmo was pre-eminently the painter of the leading Catholic and Jacobite Scottish families of his time. He returned to Britain in the 1750s and later toured America, where his only known pupil, Gilbert Stuart, joined him.