Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Browne, Alexander
BROWNE, ALEXANDER (fl. 1660), miniature painter, engraver, and printseller, who lived in the reign of Charles II, painted the portrait of that monarch and that of the Prince of Orange. In 1675 he published 'Ars Pictoria, or an Academy treating of Drawing, Painting, Limning, and Etching,' fol., London. The designs are after foreign artists, and chiefly copied from Bloemart's drawing-book. Mr. J. Chaloner Smith, in his 'Catalogue of British Mezzotint Portraits,' enumerates forty-four plates after A. van Dyck and Sir Peter Lely, which were published by Browne 'at the blew balcony in Little Queen Street,' but do not bear any engraver's name. It has been conjectured, but on insufficient grounds, that these may be the work of Browne himself.
[Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists, 1878.]