Cole moved to England and married sculptor Margaret Ward Walmsley in 1903.[2] He began to venture into the fields of wood/steel engraving and etching, but these works sold less than his portraits. He contributed several drawings to the Encyclopædia Britannica. They moved again, to the United States, in 1911.[2] In 1918, Cole became a member of the Salmagundi Club, the nation's oldest professional art club.[1] From 1924 to 1931, he taught portrait and still life classes at Cooper Union.[3] He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1930.[1] He was the president of the New York Water Color Club from 1931 to 1941.[2] In the 1940s, Cole worked as a judge of paintings in Max Pochapin's Manhattan Hall of Art, a merchandising art gallery, which was a revolutionary idea at the time.[4] From 1952 to 1953, he was president of Allied Artists of America.[5] His first wife died in 1961, and Cole married Anita Rio (1873–1971), a singer, and the widow of painter Eugene Higgins, in 1962.[2] She died in 1971.[1][6][7][8]
Cole was subsequently verified as having been the oldest living man following the death of 111-year-old Norwegian skier Herman Smith-Johannsen, on January 5, 1987.[10] He was also the oldest living person in the United States for eight months after the death of 112-year-old Elzona Maxey on April 25, 1988.
He died in New York City, aged 112 years and 136 days.
^ abcdefAlphaeus Cole, a Portraitist, 112, obituary by Michel Kimmelman, November 26, 1988, The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-11-15. (The NY Times obituary for Cole erroneously gives the year of death of Anita Rio as 1973 — the correct year of death is 1971.)
