Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/191

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
174
BROWN.

founder of the Brunonian theory of medicine. Educated on the continent, his earlier works bear the impress of its art. It was not till 1844 that he took a decided step as an exhibitor in England by sending two cartoons to Westminster Hall. In the competition in 1845 he was unsuccessful, thongh Haydon, in his Diary, speaks of his fresco as "the finest specimen of that difficult method in the Hall." Shortly after this he visited Italy. In 1848 he sent his "Wicliff reading his Translation of the Scriptures" to the Free Exhibition, near Hyde Park, where, in 1849, he exhibited "King Lear," one of his most characteristic works. At the Royal Academy, in 1851, he produced his large picture of "Chaucer at the Court of Edward the Third," which had been several years in progress. This picture, among those selected by Government for the Paris Exhibition of 1855, received the Liverpool prize of £50 in 1858. At the Royal Academy, in 1852, was first seen his picture of "Christ washing Peter's Feet," which received the Liverpool prize in 1856, and was among the Art Treasures at Manchester in 1857. After 1852, this artist, though exhibiting at times at Liverpool, Edinburgh, and other places, did not again come before the London public till 1865, when he opened an exhibition in Piccadilly of 50 pictures, and as many cartoons and sketches. Here for the first time were seen in the metropolis his pictures of "The Last of England," "The Autumn Afternoon," "Wilhelmus Conquistator," and "Work." The last-mentioned was longer in hand than any of his other productions, and was considered by the painter and his admirers his chief work at that time. Since then he has produced "The Coat of Many Colours," "Cordelia's Portion," "Elijah and the Widow's Son," "Romeo and Juliet," "The Entombment," "Don Juan," and "Jacopo Foscari," at present in different private collections. He completed in 1878 a picture of "Cromwell," representing the great Protector dictating the famous protest to the Duke of Savoy against the cruelties that sovereign inflicted on the Vaudois Protestants. He has since been engaged on a series of illustrations of the history of Manchester, which he was commissioned to execute in the Town Hall of that city.

BROWN, Henry Kirke, born at Leyden, Massachusetts, in 1814. He is the son of a farmer, and at eighteen went to Boston, and studied portrait-painting. He afterwards spent three years at Cincinnati, where in 1837 his first marble bust was executed. By the aid of friends he was enabled to visit Italy, and after studying there for some time, he returned to the United States, and settled at Brooklyn, where, having many commissions for monumental art, he perfected the casting of bronze, as a material better adapted to exposure than marble. He was made an Academician in 1851. Among his principal works in marble are the statue of "Hope," the bas-reliefs of the "Hyades" and "Pleiades," and "The Four Seasons;" besides several busts. In bronze he has executed a colossal statue of De Witt Clinton, "The Angel of Retribution," the colossal equestrian statue of "Washington," in New York, statues of Abraham Lincoln, in New York and Brooklyn, and an equestrian statue of General Scott in Washington. He now resides at Newburg, New York.

BROWN, The Rev. Hugh Stowell, born in Douglas, Isle of Man, in 1823, is the son of a clergyman of the Established Church and cousin of the Rev. Hugh Stowell, of Manchester. He was educated partly at home and partly at the Douglas Grammar School, until he reached the age of fifteen, when he came to England to learn land-surveying. After spending about two years in mastering that busi-