Alvin Gittins was a portraitist grandeur, teacher and even greater man that an artist. Gittins was born in the small town of Kidderminster, Worcester, England, and in 1946, he came to the United States as an exchange student. In 1947 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Brigham Young University. He then was appointed to the University of Utah Art Department faculty that same year. He headed the university's art department from 1956 to 1962.

When he came to the University of Utah, Gittins brought with him a powerful concept of Academic Realism to replace the still lingering effects of French Impressionism, already decades in the past. He chose academic methods to express simple truths about humans by way of the human face. He admonished students to "go beyond pretty rendering" in their search for something authentic. As time progressed, he experienced firsthand the changing face of art. Gittins found himself in a field which sought to challenge the establishment and abandon tradition. Gittins stood mostly alone as the majority of art teachers and Historians went forward preaching the abandonment of classical foundation as importance in favor of the value of being different. It’s amusing how everyone was trying to be different, going to great lengths to follow the modern crowd, and for doing so, unknowingly they were all basically choosing to be the same.  As Gittins practice the classical school of figure and portraiture, he became one of this countries finest portrait painters ever.  His paintings rival Sargent’s but with tightness and color.

He strived for his paintings to have a more-so-ness about them. He had family members of his sitters tell him that the painting looked more like the sitter than the sitter them selves.

He spoke that in his heaven there would be never ending lines of interesting models of every sort to draw and paint. He emphasized to his students that the amateur always maximized the minimal and minimize the maximal.

He worked mostly with pastels, oils, charcoals, and pencil. In 1981 he died leaving a wealth of paintings at the University of Utah and Public building around the country and well as a legacy of Utah artists such as Ed Maryon, Greg Hull, Steven Heward and Danny Baxter.