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Called “the most celebrated of American landscape painters abroad” by scholar by Edgar P. Richardson, George Loring Brown was an extremely important figure in expatriate art circles in Italy. He was esteemed for his romantic and panoramic views of the Italian countryside, and he was often referred to as the American “Claude” due to his large and structured compositions that capture the luminous qualities of moonlit and misty skies, and express the grandeur of landscapes that resonated with evidence of the great civilizations of the past.
Born in Boston, the third of eight children of Loring and Joanna Pratt Brown, Brown left home when he was fourteen years old in order to work as an apprentice to the Boston wood engraver Alonzo Hartwell. Brown received his first art training from George P.A. Healy, a Boston portraitist, who showed one of Brown’s first landscapes to Isaac P. Davis, a member of the Fine Arts Committee of the Boston Athenaeum. Brown exhibited at the Athenaeum for the first time in 1832, and in July of that year, with funds provided by Davis, he departed for Europe. After arriving in Antwerp, Brown went to London, where he received financial aid from the American engraver John Cheney. By December, Brown and Cheney were residing in Paris with the miniaturist Savinien Duborjal. In Paris, Brown became a student of landscape painter Eugčne Isabey and spent his time copying works at the Louvre, where he was inspired particularly by the paintings of Claude Lorrain, Jacob Ruysdael, and John Constable. He was able to sustain himself by selling his copies after these artists’ works.
Brown returned to Boston in 1834, where he attempted to make his living as a painter and illustrator. Unable to achieve his aim, he spent the next five years traveling through New England illustrating song sheets, painting portraits and miniatures, and creating oil paintings intended for engraved reproduction. Throughout this period, Brown found time to paint in the outdoors, creating landscapes that reflect the influence of the first generation of Hudson River School artists. At the end of the decade, Brown became intrigued with the idea of painting in Italy, and he received encouragement to do so. Following Allston’s advice, Brown left for a second trip to Europe in 1840. He remained almost twenty years. After first visiting Avignon, France, he traveled along the Rhône River, reaching Rome in September. In the summer of 1841, he established his residence in Florence, where he became friendly with fellow Americans James De Veaux and Thomas P. Rossiter. During the summer of 1844, Brown visited Naples, where he was fascinated by the city’s harbor and painted it in Castello dell ’Ovo: Bay of Naples (1844; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, M. and M. Karolik Collection).
During the next few years, Brown traveled extensivly, visiting the United States in 1846 and Germany and France in 1848. At the end of that year, he settled in Albano, which became his base for sketching trips in and around Rome. In the 1850s, he had a studio in Rome, where he entertained American painters Worthington Whittredge, George P. Healy, and American sculptors Thomas Crawford and Randolph Rogers. During the summers, Brown often made trips to Naples, Capri, Sicily, Paris, England, and Switzerland. Creating romantic scenes featuring broad views of ruins and old roads, Brown became known for his ability to emulate Claude’s atmospheric effects and golden light-filled skies. His works were popular among the English and American travelers who visited Italy, and many Bostonians ordered them from abroad.
After returning to the United States in 1859, Brown settled initially in New York, where he quickly achieved a role of importance in the American art scene. In 1859, a show of his work was held at the gallery of T. W. Parker & Company. The twenty paintings and twenty-five drawings on view received enthusiastic reviews in the press, and the exhibition was successful. In the following year, Brown organized an even larger showing at the Boston Athenaeum, including 109 paintings and drawings. The critical reception to this show was highly positive. A critic for the Boston Transcript stated that Brown’s paintings gave the exhibition “an interest and a vitality which no exhibition possessed in this country,” while another writer described the show as giving out “a large battery of pictorial electricity.” During 1861 and most of 1862, Brown resided in New York and often took sketching trips in New England. During the summers, he stayed in Newport, Rhode Island and occasionally visited the White Mountains and Medford, Massachusetts.
In 1863, Brown left New York to settle in the Boston suburb of Medford, where he resided for about three years. During the Civil War, Brown sought to sell a series of battle scenes from the war, but due to his reputation as a painter of Italian scenes, he could not convince patrons to support this effort.
In 1864, Brown moved with his family to South Boston, where they remained for fifteen years. In the 1870s, Brown produced several important Italian subjects, but he also concentrated on creating views of New England, focusing especially on the White Mountains. In 1879, Brown purchased a home in Malden, Massachusetts, and then took a final trip to Europe. On this sojourn, he visited Paris, but the rest of his itinerary is unknown. Brown’s paintings of the 1880s are heavily painted and darkly toned.
Throughout his career, Brown frequently exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum, the National Academy of Design, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Works by Brown may be found in many important private and public collections including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; The Newark Museum, New Jersey; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Mead Art Gallery, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts; the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts; the Bostonian Society, Old State House, Boston, Massachusetts; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; Harvard Musical Association, Boston, Massachusetts; National Park Service, Longfellow National Historic Site, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Fruitlands Museums, Harvard, Massachusetts; Malden Public Library, Malden, Massachusetts; Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts; the Portland Museum of Art, Maine;
Museum of Art, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine; Colonel Black Mansion, Ellsworth, Maine; the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, Vermont; Shelburne Museum, Burlington, Vermont; the University of Kansas Museum of Art, Lawrence; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca New York; Museum of the City of New York; New York Historical Society; Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California; San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, California; Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut;
Mattatuck Historical Society, Waterbury, Connecticut; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Cummer Gallery of Art, Jacksonville, Florida; Museum of Fine Arts of St. Petersburg, Florida; Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens;
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana; Davenport Museum of Art, Davenport, Iowa; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans Louisiana;
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Springville Museum of Art, Springville, Utah; Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, Norfolk, Virginia; and the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington.
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