Painter, printmaker, book illustrator (including Erskine Caldwell's 1930 second novel, Poor Fool), Alexander Couard was born and raised in New York City. He studied at the Art Students League there and pursued freelance work both at home and in the Berkshires during summers followed by a tour of the American southwest that produced a group of watercolors depicting the terrain and people of the region. Following service during World War I, Couard settled in Connecticut, where he worked from his studio in Fairfield County and where he became a member of the Silvermine Guild Of Artists in the mid-1920s.