Ford Madox Brown
Ford Madox Brown | |
---|---|
Pre-Raphaelite | |
Spouses | Elizabeth Bromley
(m. 1841; died 1846)Emily Hill
(m. 1853; died 1890) |
Children | 5, including Lucy Madox Brown and Catherine Madox Brown |
Ford Madox Brown (16 April 1821 – 6 October 1893) was a British painter of moral and historical subjects, notable for his distinctively graphic and often
Early life
Brown was the grandson of the medical theorist John Brown, founder of the Brunonian system of medicine. His great-grandfather was a Scottish labourer. His father Ford Brown served as a purser in the Royal Navy, including a period serving under Sir Isaac Coffin and a period on HMS Arethusa. He left the Navy after the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
In 1818, Ford Brown married Caroline Madox, of an old Kentish family.[1] Brown's parents had limited financial resources, and they moved to Calais to seek cheaper lodgings, where their daughter Elizabeth Coffin was born in 1819 and their son Ford Madox Brown in 1821.
Brown's education was limited, as the family frequently moved between lodgings in the
Works
The Tate Gallery holds an early example of Brown's work, a portrait of his father.
In 1843 he submitted work to the Westminster Cartoon Competition, for compositions to decorate the new
Brown struggled to make his mark in the 1850s, with his paintings failing to find buyers, and he considered emigrating to India. In 1852 he started work on two of his most significant works.
One of his most famous images is
Brown's most important painting was
Brown wrote a catalogue to accompany the special exhibition of Work. This publication included an extensive explanation of Work that nevertheless leaves many questions unanswered. Brown's concern with the social issues addressed in Work prompted him to open a soup kitchen for Manchester's hungry, and to attempt to aid the city's unemployed to find work by founding a labour exchange.[5][6]
Brown found patrons in the north of England, including Plint, George Rae from Birkenhead,[7] John Miller from Liverpool, and James Leathart from Newcastle. By the late 1850s he had lost patience with the poor reception he received at the Royal Academy and ceased to show his works there, rejecting an offer from Millais to support his becoming an associate member. He founded the Hogarth Club in 1858, with William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and his former pupil Rossetti. After a successful period of a few years, the club reached over 80 members, including several prominent members of the Royal Academy, but Brown resigned in 1860, and the club collapsed in 1861.
From the 1860s, Brown also designed furniture and stained glass. He was a founder partner of
Brown's major achievement after Work was The Manchester Murals, a cycle of twelve paintings in the Great Hall of Manchester Town Hall depicting the history of the city. Brown would be 72 by the time he finished the murals. In total, he took six years perfecting the murals, which were his last major work.[8]
Family
Ford Madox Brown was married twice. His first wife Elizabeth Bromley was his first cousin, the daughter of his mother's sister Mary. They were married in Meopham in Kent in April 1841, shortly before his 20th birthday and less than a year after the sudden death of his sister Elizabeth. They lived in Montmartre in 1841 with Brown's invalid father who died the following summer.
Their first child died young as an infant in November 1842. Their daughter Emma Lucy was born in 1843 and the family moved back to England in 1844. They travelled to Rome in 1845 to alleviate the illness of his wife, who was suffering from consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis). She died in Paris in June 1846, aged 27, on the journey back to England from Rome, and was buried on the western side of Highgate Cemetery. Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Siddal and other members of the Rossetti family were later buried alongside.
Emma Hill became a frequent model for Brown from 1848; for example, she is the wife in The Last of England. She became his mistress, and they shared a house in London, but social convention discouraged him from marrying an illiterate daughter of a bricklayer. Their daughter Catherine Emily was born in 1850, and eventually they were married at St Dunstan-in-the-West in April 1853. Ford leased a house in Fitzroy Square.[9]
Their son, Oliver Madox Brown (1855–1874) (known as Nolly) showed promise both as an artist and poet, but died of
His daughters Lucy Madox Brown and Catherine Madox Brown were also competent artists. Lucy married William Michael Rossetti in 1874. Catherine, married Francis Hueffer; through Catherine, Brown was the grandfather of novelist Ford Madox Ford and great-grandfather of Labour Home Secretary Frank Soskice.
Death
Brown's second wife died in October 1890, and he died in Primrose Hill, north London, in 1893. He is buried in the
-
Brown's first surviving daughter Lucy in 1849
-
Catherine Madox Brown
-
Oliver in 1855
-
Arthur in 1856
-
Emma in 1852 (study for The Last of England)
-
Ford Madox Brown, 1867, drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Legacy
The Ford Madox Brown, a
It states on the Wetherspoon's website that "This J D Wetherspoon pub is named after the much-travelled artist Ford Madox Brown, a one-time resident of Victoria Park, a suburb south of the pub." The pub opened in 2007.Gallery
-
James Leathart
-
Traveller, 1868
-
The Irish Girl, 1860
-
Cromwell, Protector of the Vaudois, 1877
-
Finding of Don Juan by Haidee, 1873
-
Cordelia's Portion
-
Byron's Dream
-
The French saint KingAll Saints Church, Cambridge
-
Chaucer at the Court of Edward III, oil on canvas painting by Ford Madox Brown, 1847–1851, Art Gallery of New South Wales
-
Romeo and Juliet parting on the balcony in Act III. Delaware Art Museum, 1870
-
Brown's Jacob and Joseph's Coat at Museo de Arte de Ponce, Ponce, Puerto Rico
-
King Rene's Honeymoon, 1864, an imaginary scene in the life of the art-loving medieval king René of Anjou.
-
Jesus washing Peter's feet
See also
- List of paintings by Ford Madox Brown
- British art
- English art
References
- ^ Rossetti, William Michael (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 4 (11th ed.). pp. 657–658.
- ^ "Tate.org".
- ^ Sale of Valuable Pictures, The Times, 28 March 1859
- ^ Dianne Sachko Macleod, 'Plint, Thomas Edward (1823–1861)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004
- ^ Fiona MacCarthy (31 August 2012). "Why the pre-Raphaelites were the YBAs of their day". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 September 2012.
- ^ "Biography of Ford Madox Brown-Social conscience". Manchester Art Gallery. 2009. Archived from the original on 20 December 2014. Retrieved 11 September 2012.
- ^ "George Rae, 1817-1902". University of Glasgow. Retrieved 24 June 2016.
- ^ Hughes, Kathryn (16 September 2011). "Ford Madox Brown: pre-Raphaelite pioneer and working-class hero". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 November 2011.
- ^ "Fitzroy Square Pages 52-63 Survey of London: Volume 21, the Parish of St Pancras Part 3: Tottenham Court Road and Neighbourhood. Originally published by London County Council, London, 1949". British History Online. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
- ^ TLS (8/10/2008).
- ^ "The Ford Madox Brown, Manchester | Our Pubs". J D Wetherspoon. 17 December 2007. Retrieved 13 April 2012.
Sources
External videos | |
---|---|
Tate Gallery |
- ISBN 0-300-02743-5.
- Kenneth Bendiner, Ford Madox Brown: Il Lavoro, Turin: Lindau, 1991.
- Kenneth Bendiner, The Art of Ford Madox Brown, University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1998.
- Tessa Sidey (ed.), Ford Madox Brown: The Unofficial Pre-Raphaelite, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 2008, ISBN 978-1-904832-56-0.
- Julian Treuherz, Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer, Philip Wilson Publishers, 2011, ISBN 978-0-856677-00-7, p. 12.
- Angela Thirlwell, Into the Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown, Pimlico, 2011, ISBN 978-1-844139-14-9.
External links
- The iBiblio Web Museum exhibit on Brown
- Some of his paintings in the Carol Gerten Fine Art library
- Waiting: An English fireside of 1854–5
- Spartacus Educational: Ford Madox Brown
- Chronology on Britain Unlimited
- Some stained glass designs by Ford Madox Brown
- Ford Madox Brown in the History of Art Archived 30 September 2010 at the Wayback Machine
- Phryne's list of pictures in public galleries
- Photo of Ford Madox Brown's grave and a brief article about his time in Finchley
- The Pre-Raph Pack Discover more about the artists, the techniques they used and a timeline spanning 100 years.
- Ford Madox Brown: PreRaphaelite Pioneer Exhibition, Manchester Art Gallery, Saturday 24 September 2011 – Sunday 29 January 2012
- "The secret love of Ford Madox Brown": essay on Ford Madox Brown and Mathilde Blind, by Angela Thirlwell, from TLS, 8 October 2008
- Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery's Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource Archived 27 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine includes almost two hundred paintings on canvas and works on paper by Ford Madox Brown
- Tim Barringer, 'Brown, Ford Madox (1821–1893)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2005 accessed 2 May 2014
- Biography of Ford Madox Brown, Manchester Art Gallery
- 78 artworks by or after Ford Madox Brown at the Art UK site