Alexander Day (1772 - 12 January 1841), a miniature painter and art dealer.
Day resided for several years in Rome, whence he brought with him on his return to England in 1800 many fine works by the old masters, which passed into the collections of John Julius Angerstein and others. Among these were Titian's Rape of Ganymede and Venus and Adonis, Raphael's St. Catharine and the Madonna, Infant Christ, and St. John (the Aldobrandini Madonna),[1] Leonardo da Vinci's Christ disputing with the Doctors, Domenichino's S. Jerome and the Angel, Annibale Carracci's Christ appearing to Simon Peter after his Resurrection, and Gaspard Poussin's Landscape with Abraham and Isaac, which are now in the National Gallery. His portrait miniatures of ladies are particulariy graceful.
Day purchased from the Borghese collection Annibale Carracci's Temptation of St Anthony, and, in 1792 Andrea Mantegna's Adoration of the Shepherds, which William Buchanan sold to Richard Payne Knight at Downton Castle.
He died at Chelsea, London on January 12, 1841.
This article incorporates text from the article "DAY, Alexander" in Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers by Michael Bryan, edited by Robert Edmund Graves and Sir Walter Armstrong, an 1886–1889 publication now in the public domain.