Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Christie, Alexander
CHRISTIE, ALEXANDER (1807–1860), painter, eldest son of David Christie, a grand-nephew of Hugh Christie [q. v.], was born in 1807 in Edinburgh, and educated at the academy, and afterwards at the university there. Intended for the law, he served an apprenticeship to a writer to the signet, but was never admitted W.S., his father's death leaving him free to follow his own wishes, and to devote himself to art, for which he had shown great feeling from his early youth. Giving up excellent professional prospects, he entered in 1833 as a pupil at the ‘Trustees’ Academy’ in Edinburgh, then under the direction of Sir William Allan [q. v.] After studying in London and Paris he returned to Edinburgh and settled there. In 1843 he was appointed an assistant, and in 1845—in succession to Thomas Duncan, R.S.A.—first master or director of the ornamental department of the School of Art, under the board of trustees for manufactures in Scotland. In 1848 he was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy, where for some years one or more of his pictures appeared in every exhibition. He exhibited only once in the Royal Academy in London, sending in 1853 ‘A Window-seat at Wittemburg, 1526—Luther, the married priest.’ He possessed much originality and taste in design, and was a bold and efficient colourist. One of his most successful pictures, ‘An Incident in the History of the Great Plague,’ is in the National Gallery of Scotland, which also possesses a copy, by the artist himself, of a large picture painted by him as an altar-piece for the chapel at Murthley Castle, ‘The Apparition of the Cross to Constantine.’ Several of the illustrations of the Abbotsford edition of ‘The Bride of Lammermoor’ are from his designs. Christie delivered several courses of lectures at the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh, and elsewhere, on various subjects connected with art. A paper by him ‘On the Adaptation of previous styles of Architecture to our present Wants' is printed in the ‘Transactions of the Architectural Institute of Scotland,’ vol. iii. (1854). He died 5 May 1860.
[Redgrave’s Dict. of British Artists, 1878; family papers]