The World of J. G. Brown

John George Brown (b. 1831) was one of the most popular American artists of the later nineteenth century and a prominent fixture in the New York art world. His wide-spread appeal and his financial success were legendary. In 1882, Harper's Weekly declared, "We have no more popular artist in America than J.G. Brown. He is more certain of his audience, and more direct in his appeal to it, than any other." Brown painted two worlds, the rural and the urban. His scenes of children playing in the countryside resemble works by his contemporaries, Winslow Homer and Eastman Johnson. His innovative urban scenes represent the impoverished children who swept crossings, shined shoes, played music, and sold flowers and apples on New York City's streets. During a career that spanned over fifty years---from the Civil War to World War I---he expressed his personal faith in freedom and self-reliance. These, and his passion for storytelling, were the threads that united his worlds.

Brown was, and is still, most associated with the image of the entrepreneurial young bootblack---the artistic counterpart of Horatio Alger's boy heroes. Many of the children Brown depicted came from immigrant families. He had himself emigrated from England in 1853 as a poor young man, an experience that gave him a unique perspective. In addition to portraying young merchants at work, Brown often showed poor children pursuing the same activities that rich people might. His street urchins make music; they play card games; they imitate politicians by giving speeches, and art collectors by admiring objects pulled from the trash. These situations convey both humor and a sense of their subjects' inherent goodness. Although best known for his images of children, Brown also painted portraits and landscapes, Grand Manan Island fishermen, and elderly farmers and their wives.

Wealthy collectors bought his paintings, and ordinary citizens bought the prints made after them. He is still widely collected today. While many artists disdained the business of art, Brown embraced it unapologetically---regularly applying for copyrights and encouraging the marketing of his work through reproductions. Much of his success depended on how actively he pursued opportunities to show his work. New York offered plenty of venues, including commercial galleries, private clubs, special exhibitions, and receptions held at artists' studios. Brown took advantage of them all. His paintings were probably on view more regularly, at a greater variety of places both in and outside of New York, and over a longer span of time than those of any of his contemporaries.

Brown died in 1913, the same year the groundbreaking New York Armory exhibition introduced European modernists to American audiences and dramatically changed the direction of art in the United States.

The World of J.G. Brown by Martha Hoppin---260 pages with over 200 illustrations, 140 of them in color---treats Brown's overall career and themes; his rural scenes and those of his contemporaries; his masterpiece, a view of New York City's dockworkers (Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.); and the subject matter for which he is best known, the New York City bootblack. This is the first lengthy treatment of his life and career.

Other American artists discussed in this book include Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, Seymour Guy, Thomas LeClear, Henry Inman, Edward L. Henry, Milton Burns, Glbert Gaul, Frederick Dielman, Karl Witkowaski, and Thomas Waterman Wood.

Works reproduced are drawn from many private collections and over thirty-five public collections, among them The Cleveland Museum of Art; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; The Walters Art Museum; North Carolina Museum of Art; Joslyn Art Museum; The Detroit Institute of Arts; Toledo Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Williams College Museum of Art; Carnegie Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; The Butler Institute of American Art; New Britain Museum of American Art; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Chrysler Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; San Antonio Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum; and National Academy Museum.

Martha Hoppin is an independent curator of American art. She organized an exhibition of Brown's work some twenty years ago, which led to the present study. She has been guest curator for additional exhibitions and catalogs, among them Love Story: Romance Illustrations from the New Britain Museum of American Art, and has published articles in American Art Journal and American Art Review. She coauthored Changing Prospects: The View from Mount Holyoke, Cornell University Press, 2002; and contributed an essay to Stephen Hannock, Hudson Hills Press, 2009