John Brown (artist)
John Brown (1752 – September 5, 1787) was a Scottish artist.
Biography
John Brown was born around 1752, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of a watchmaker. He studied in Edinburgh at the Trustees' Academy.[1] Around 1769 he traveled to Rome, where he became a pupil of Alexander Runciman. They became strong friends.
For the next eleven years he lived in Rome. In Italy and Sicily he made sketches of the ruins of ancient buildings for his Scottish patrons, William Townley and Sir William Young,[1] and sent drawings to the Royal Academy.
Brown worked on a small scale and favoured pencil, pen and wash as his media. Notable among his drawings are a number of genre scenes, such as Two Men in Conversation (c. 1775–80; Courtauld Institute, London), which show the influence of Henry Fuseli, with whom Brown was friendly.[1]
In 1780 Brown returned to Scotland, and over the next several years drew many portraits of dignitaries, including twenty-five portraits of members of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries.
He lived in London in 1786–87, and exhibited miniature portraits. He returned to Scotland in ill health and died at Leith, Edinburgh's harbour area, in 1787.
Notes
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bryan, Michael (1886). "Brown, John". In Graves, Robert Edmund (ed.). Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (A–K). Vol. I (3rd ed.). London: George Bell & Sons.
- Articles with short description
- Short description is different from Wikidata
- Use dmy dates from April 2022
- Wikipedia articles incorporating text from Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, volume 1
- Articles with ISNI identifiers
- Articles with VIAF identifiers
- Articles with WorldCat Entities identifiers
- Articles with GND identifiers
- Articles with ICCU identifiers
- Articles with LCCN identifiers
- Articles with NLA identifiers
- Articles with AGSA identifiers
- Articles with RKDartists identifiers
- Articles with ULAN identifiers
- Articles with DTBIO identifiers
- Articles with Trove identifiers
- Articles with SNAC-ID identifiers
- 1752 births
- 1787 deaths
- Draughtsmen
- Scottish portrait painters
- Artists from Edinburgh
- 18th-century Scottish artists
- 18th-century Scottish male artists
- Alumni of the Trustees' Academy