Walt Whitman

Overview Walt Whitman John White Alexander American 1889 On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 774 In 1886, Alexander began a series of portraits of distinguished authors for "Century Magazine," which eventually included such writers as Thomas Hardy, George Bancroft, and Robert Louis Stevenson. On February 22, 23, and 24, 1886, the artist visited Walt Whitman (1819–1892), the famous poet who lived in Camden, New Jersey, to begin work on a portrait. By September 1887, Alexander had completed a large study of the sitter in crayon. The oil painting, however, was not finished until 1889, three years after Whitman posed for the artist. Although Whitman liked Alexander, he did not like the portrait, which may explain why it was not published in "Century Magazine" as part of the series as originally intended. It was ironic, therefore, that the competing magazine "Harper's Monthly" chose the portrait to illustrate a poem by Whitman at the time of the poet's death in 1892. View more