John White Alexander (1856-1915)
Oil on canvas, 1889
Gift of the Partnership for New York City, Inc.
NYSM 2003.41.67

Having been successful in the wholesale grocery business, Milbank expanded his entrepreneurial interests into banking and finance. In the 1850s he financed inventor Gail Borden’s New York Condensed Milk Company (later Borden Milk Products), a venture which galvanized the canned food industry and helped ensure distribution of unspoiled foodstuffs to the Union Army during the Civil War. Through this partnership Milbank secured the government contract for canned milk during the war and amassed a fortune.

Pennsylvania-born John White Alexander began his career in art as an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly. After studying in Paris and Munich, where he lived the Bohemian life of a young artist, Alexander returned to New York City in 1881 and became a successful portraitist. He gained an international reputation while again living in Paris from 1891 until 1901. Commissions from the Milbank family completed in 1889 included this posthumous portrait of Milbank as well as a portrait of poet Walt Whitman, which Mrs. Milbank donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1891.