Born in Chittagong in India, Surgeon Major Alexander Hunter FRSE FRS (1816–1890) was the son of an East India Company civil servant. The family moved to Edinburgh to live at 1 Doune Terrace around the mid-1830s. Alexander, along with a cousin James, were among the first students to join the newly founded Edinburgh Academy. In 1839 he qualified as MD and FRCS from Edinburgh University. Hunter had an interest in art from a young age, and alongside his medical studies he had been a pupil of the Royal Scottish Academy and a draughtsman in the dissecting room of the Edinburgh Infirmary. He was also a pupil at the Life Academies and Schools of Design and Modelling in Edinburgh and Paris.

In 1842 Hunter was nominated for an assistant surgeon post in Madras, and this was the start of enduring connection with the city—both medical and artistic. Whilst working as Resident Surgeon of the Madras Presidency, in 1850 Hunter set up India's first arts institution, the Madras School of Art. To help finance the school, he sold his own library, etchings, drawings and paintings. Hunter went on to have an instrumental role in arts education in colonial India—and the School of Art itself, still in existence today as the Government College of Fine Arts, is a profound symbol of the beginnings of the merge of East and West.

For Hunter, art, technology and medicine were interrelated disciplines and he was interested in engaging the humanising effects of the arts. In India, he experimented in pottery and a range of crafts, and was involved in the encouragement of local industry. Keen that his school include programmes in industrial arts and crafts, its name was changed to Madras School of Art and Industry. Hunter noted some of the problems involved in craft production in India and he championed Indian products as often superior to and more durable than those produced and sold cheaply in Britain. The Madras School of Art was an obvious partner for the Edinburgh museum and Hunter supplied George Wilson, the Museum's first Director, with materials and tools which were used and produced in the Madras school.

Hunter was also a pioneer of photography. He established Madras Photographic Society, one of the earliest photographic societies in the world.