Watercolourist. Born in Edinburgh, the son of the painter Robert Alexander (1840 - 1923), he travelled to Tangiers in 1887 with his father, together with the other noted artists Joseph Crawhall (1861 - 1913) and Pollok Nisbet (1848 - 1922). There he painted desert scenes, together with flora and fauna. He travelled to Egypt in 1892 where he lived among the people for four years, learning their language and painting landscapes of the desert and along the Nile.
He settled in Edinburgh in 1904 where he developed to become on of Scotland's finest painters of birds and animals. he also produced a few landscapes of the Outer Hebrides and Kirkcudbrightshire.
Suffering a stroke in 1917, he died in Musselburgh nine years later.