Alphaeus Philemon Cole

Alphaeus Philemon Cole studied at Académie Julian. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are portrait. Places of work recorded in the authority are United States. Employment is recorded with Cooper Union. Work by Alphaeus Philemon Cole is recorded in the collections of National Portrait Gallery, Yale University Art Gallery and Georgia Museum of Art.

• Name — Alphaeus Philemon Cole • Born — 12 July 1876 • Birthplace — Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S. • Place of death — New York City, U.S. • Occupation — * Artist • engraver • etcher • Known for — * Portraits • etchings • still life paintings • world's oldest living man

Cole studied art first under Isaac Craig in Italy, then in Paris from 1892 to 1901 with Jean Paul Laurens and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant at the Académie Julian, and later at the École des Beaux-Arts. In the mid-1890s, he began to produce many vibrant works, mostly various still lifes and portraits. His painting of Dante was exhibited in the 1900 Paris Salon, and more artwork was displayed at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Cole moved to England and married sculptor Margaret Ward Walmsley in 1903. He began to venture into the fields of wood/steel engraving and etching, but these works sold less than his portraits. He contributed several drawings to the Encyclopædia Britannica. They moved again, to the United States, in 1911. In 1918, Cole became a member of the Salmagundi Club, the nation's oldest professional art club. From 1924 to 1931, he taught portrait and still life classes at Cooper Union. He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1930. He was the president of the New York Water Color Club from 1931 to 1941. In the 1940s, Cole worked as a judge of paintings in Max Pochapin's Manhattan Hall of Art, a merchandising art gallery, which was a revolutionary idea at the time. From 1952 to 1953, he was president of Allied Artists of America. His first wife died in 1961, and Cole married Anita Rio (born 1873), a singer, and the widow of painter Eugene Higgins, in 1962. She died in 1971. Cole actively painted and exhibited up to the age of 103. He died at New York's Chelsea Hotel, where he had lived for 35 years. Cole's work is in the permanent collections of London's National Portrait Gallery and the Brooklyn Museum, and his papers are stored at the Smithsonian Institution. Cole was subsequently verified as having been the oldest living man following the death of 111-year-old Norwegian skier Herman Smith-Johannsen, on January 5, 1987. He was also the oldest living person in the United States for seven months after the death of 112-year-old Elzona Maxey on April 25, 1988. He died in New York City, aged 112 years and 136 days.