Alexander Crane founded the Connecticut Watercolor Society and was elected as its first President in 1944, the year the Society was initially organized on a formal basis. He served as president for a two-year term.  (To ensure fresh leadership, the bylaws provided that a new president was to be elected every two years.)

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The roots of the Connecticut Watercolor Society go back to 1938 when Alexander Crane organized an exhibition open to the state's watercolor artists. The exhibition was held at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Nov. 13 - Dec. 3, 1938. A mimeographed catalogue was published, entitled "The Connecticut Water Colour and Gouache Exhibition: First Exhibition," with a foreword by Crane stating, "it has been decided to make it an annual occasion." There were five local jurors (including Theodore Sizer, Professor of Art History at Yale) and 116 paintings were exhibited. Prices listed for these works ranged from $5 to $200. Crane himself exhibited four watercolor paintings, two at $30 each, and the other two at $40 each. Hanging the show were Crane, Sanford Low, and A. Everett Austin. Austin, who had roomed with Crane at Harvard, was the Atheneum's new young curator. Low, an artist active from the start in these exhibitions, was elected as the Society's second president in 1946.

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The 1938 exhibition was followed by annual exhibitions in which Alexander Crane's paintings were included in every year except one (the 12th annual in 1949) until his death in 1953. These were all juried exhibitions. Crane wrote most of the forewords from the first catalogue in 1938 through to the catalogue for the eighth annual exhibition in 1945.

 

The forewords by Crane reveal that he was a strong proponent of modernist painting and that despite opposition from some of the society's members, he succeeded in arranging for outside jurors to select the work to be included in annual shows. The early catalogues demonstrate that from a loose association of watercolor artists exhibiting in 1938, the bar was gradually lifted, more rigorous jurying was instituted, and efforts were made to encourage and include experimental approaches to painting in watercolor.

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According to the entry for Alexander Crane in Who Was Who in American Art, he exhibited at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts in 1937, the New York Watercolor Club in 1939, and also in 1939 at the American Watercolor Society in New York City. Keeping in mind that he was very active in the Connecticut Watercolor Society at this time in his life, it is clear that these were busy and productive years for him.

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The Seventh Annual Exhibition, Dec. 5 - Dec. 24, 1944, held again at The Atheneum (as were the previous six exhibitions), marked a breakthrough. In that year, the artists had officially organized themselves as The Connecticut Watercolor Society. The Seventh Annual in 1944 was their first exhibition as a formal group. For the first time outside jurors were brought in. There were three jurors: Herbert Barnett, Reginald Marsh, and Lester Stevens. Three of

Alexander Crane's paintings were juried into this show: "Mill Way", "Will Bodfish's Bog", and "Hurricane Morning" - the latter of which was awarded an honorable mention. Crane's paintings were priced from $50 to $75.

Alexander Crane died 1953, in a hospital bed where he was recovering from injuries caused by slipping and falling on a wet lawn. He was not quite 49 years of age. During his recovery, he was working on a series of watercolors of tropical birds.

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In the 16th annual exhibition of the Connecticut Watercolor Society, Inc. (Dec. 5, 1953 through January 3, 1954, at the Wadsworth Atheneum), two of Alexander Crane's paintings were exhibited "in memoriam". The foreword to the catalogue, written by Rose Churchill, was in recognition of his contributions to the society and it gives a summary of his professional career. It is mentioned that he received the Dixie Award in the previous year's show.

 

Alexander Crane studied with Eliot O'Hara in Goose Rocks Beach (Ogunquit), Maine, and with Charles Martin in Hartford, Connecticut. The Munson Gallery held a solo show of Alexander Crane's watercolors in 1942 from 20 January - 7 February (at that time located at 275 Orange Street in New Haven, Connecticut). The show included 22 paintings, all dated 1939, 1940, or 1941. Each of the paintings was priced at $30. Crane also exhibited in Barnstable, Massachusetts, in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1952, and in the Connecticut Watercolor Society's many traveling exhibitions during the years 1938 - 53. A retrospective, organized by his daughter Alexandra, was held at the Sturgis Public Library in Barnstable in the mid 1980's.

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Many of Alexander Crane's paintings were done on No Man's Land. The Crane family owned this island, just off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, until the start of World War II when it was taken over by the U.S. Navy for military exercises. Crane was at times accompanied by other artists on his painting trips to No Man's Land. Among these were his artist friends Rose Churchill of Farmington and Norma Sloper of Rocky Hill.

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Alexander Crane met the artist Norma Sloper through his friend, the Reverend Harold King, who was minister of the Congregational Church in Farmington, Connecticut. Sloper was King's aunt. King officiated at Crane's wedding. Later Sloper painted an oil portrait of the bride, Mary Crane.

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Around 1995 a number of Crane's watercolor paintings were stolen from a private collection in Colorado in a break-in during which no other items were taken. To date these stolen paintings have not been recovered.

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In addition to his painting, Alexander Crane was an accomplished weaver. He also designed ceramics. In 1949, he was working in the Jugtown pottery cooperative. In addition to pottery, he made sculptures in fired clay. Some of these - sculptures of mermaids and of small animals - are in private collections.

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An exhibition of textiles designed by Alexander Crane took place at the North Carolina State Art Gallery, in Raleigh, 29 March – 18 April, 1948. Some of his watercolors were also in the exhibition. A featured piece in the exhibition was a large wall hanging, entitled "New England Village," designed by Crane and woven by Alice Turnball of Haddam, Connecticut. The present whereabouts of this piece is not known. It depicted Crane's own home in Barnstable, Massachusetts, his craft and antique shop "The Leading Wind" in West Barnstable, the West Barnstable Community Church, fish shacks on Barnstable harbor, and houses in Barnstable village. According to the brochure, which accompanied this exhibition, Crane was for several years the Executive Secretary of the Society of Connecticut Craftsmen and served on the Design Committee of the American Craftsmen's Educational Council with its headquarters at America House in New York. The same brochure also states "his panel in the Boston Symposium of Arts and Industry, at the Boston Institute of Modern Art, in 1947, was much admired." The brochure mentions as well that Crane had exhibited his paintings in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Hartford, and that at the time of the 1948 exhibition in Raleigh, he was on the faculty of the Department of Architecture at North Carolina State College where his classes included painting, drawing, sculpture, and design.

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A portrait of Alexander Crane, painted in oils by Cecilia Beaux, is in a private collection. This was done out of mutual friendship. It was painted when Crane was studying in Europe in the early 1930's, at which time he met Beaux.

 

In the catalogues of the Connecticut Watercolor Society's annual exhibitions, Alexander Crane's addresses are given as follows:

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1938 - 40, Cheshire; 1941, Farmington; 1942 - 45, Cheshire; 1946 - 51, Barnstable (Mass.); and 1953, Barnstable. Exhibition labels show that in 1952 he lived in New Bern, North Carolina.​

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