Thomas Alexander Harrison

Alexander Harrison spent nearly six years as a draughtsman on a United States government survey of the Pacific coast before he came to Paris in 1879 to train as a painter. He studied with Jean-Léon Gérôme and then came under the influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage, who encouraged him to paint outdoors, and he was soon working on the coast of Brittany, at Pont-Aven and Concarneau.

The sea became his subject, above all long, low waves rolling onto a beach under soft, shifting light. The New York Times called him the dean of American painters in Paris, and he stayed in France until his death in 1930. In the 1890s the young Marcel Proust visited his cottage near Beg-Meil in Brittany, and Harrison is often named among the real painters behind Elstir, the artist in Proust's novel.