Frederick Cornelius Alston

Frederick Cornelius Alston was born on October 31, 1895, in Wilmington, North Carolina. He worked as a bricklayer before becoming an art student. Alston was educated at the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Arts and Shaw University, and studied painting with Thornton Oakley and George Harding. Alston also received early education in architecture and rendering. He briefly studied interior decoration, and also studied lettering at the Detroit School of Lettering in 1916.

Alston taught architectural rendering at the Tuskegee Institute from 1922-1924, where one of his murals can still be viewed. He moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1929, and served as the Art Director at Sumner High School beginning in 1930. When the People's Art Center opened its doors in the 1940's, Alston and a number of other local artists volunteered services as instructors, helping the Center to establish St. Louis's first integrated public art curriculum.

Alston was a prolific painter, exhibiting frequently with organizations such as the St. Louis Citizens Art Commission and the St. Louis Society of Independent Artists throughout the 1930s. He also exhibited with the Urban League of St. Louis, an organization dedicated to advancing the work of African American artists.

Alston gained recognition for his landscapes, portraits and depictions of urban life, and won numerous awards for his work, including the Joseph T. Bailey Prize of the Academy of Natural Science, Philadelphia; first-, second- and third-place cover designs of Philadelphia in Art Students Magazine, 1918; several first- and second-place prizes at the annual Exhibition of Works of Negro Artists in St. Louis from 1929-1932. His work was later featured in exhibitions at the Library of Congress (1940) and at the City Art Museum (1949).

Alston was active in St. Louis until the late-1940s. He died on August 1, 1987, in Columbia, Maryland.