Alexander was son of a weaver, John McKerrow – also noted a skilful draughts player – and his wife Jean Sloan, of Douglas, Lanarkshire. He was born there on 19th June 1835 and baptised on 23rd July, though not with his mother’s maiden name of ‘Sloan’ despite apparent initial-signature use of it. The family home at Douglas was more specifically Craigburn, a row of houses by the bridge over the Craig Burn, half a mile north of Uddington and about eight miles from Crawfordjohn. McKerrow was present there for the 1841 and 1851 censuses, but in 1861 was with his paternal grandmother, Margaret McKerrow, and others of the family at 174 Cowcadden Street, Barony, Glasgow, and noted as an ‘Artist Painter’. This is the only documentary evidence of that activity other than the two signed dog paintings.

McKerrow married Isabella Lawcock (1824–1912) at Douglas on 28th April 1865, when he was described in the register as a ‘joiner’, and from then on they lived near her family at Easter Tofts (or Laigh Tofts), Douglas. In 1871 the census calls him a ‘colliery wright’, then in 1881, 1891 and 1901 a ‘colliery joiner’, and he died there on 26th February 1909. The couple had two children. Their daughter Janet was born in late 1865 and died on 23rd July 1930, ‘in her 66th year’ according to the inscription added to her parents’ gravestone at Douglas. Her brother, James Dickson McKerrow, also a painter, was born at Easter Tofts on 14th June 1867. He showed work at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1901–1902 and at the Glasgow Institute but seems primarily to have been a teacher. His gravestone in the Ford Road cemetery in Crieff (Perth and Kinross) records that he was art master at Morrison’s Academy there from 1895 to 1931. He died on 4th June 1941.

Summarised from Art UK’s ‘Art Detective’ discussion ‘What more can we establish about the painter of this greyhound?’