Bacchante by Alexander Mann expected to sell for £12,000

Alexander Mann was born in Glasgow on January 22, 1853. He took drawing lessons from the age of ten with Robert Greenlees (1820–94) and then attended evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art, where Greenlees was headmaster. In 1877 he went to Paris and enrolled at the Académie Julian, and then studied under Mihály Munkácsy and from 1881 to 1885 under Carolus-Duran.

 From 1883-93 Mann exhibited in London at the Royal Academy, Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Fine Art Society, New
Gallery, Ridley Art Club, New English Art Club and Society of British Artists, a society that appointed James McNeill Whistler its President in 1886. In the same year he was invited to become the first Scottish member of
the New English Art Club and was joined by several of his friends, notably John Lavery, Thomas Millie Dow of the Glasgow Boys and Norman Garstin.

Influenced by the Hague school and by Jules Bastien-Lepage, his picture A Bead Stringer, Venice gained an honorable mention at the Salon in 1885 but after a public controversy over this painting when it was exhibited at the Royal Glasgow Institute, Mann settled in England.

Notable auction sales of Mann’s work include £26,290 (Christie’s London 28th October 2004 lot 218), £10,000 (L&T, Edinburgh 29th May 2008 lot 142) and 11,000 EUR (Whyte’s, Dublin 22nd February 2005 lot 95).

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