Alfred Laurens Brennan

Background

Alfred Laurens Brennan was born on February 14, 1853 at Louisville, Kentucky, the son of John Fletcher and Evangeline (Williamson) Brennan. The father, a Canadian writer and publisher, served in the Northern army in the Civil War; the mother came of Pennsylvania Quaker stock. After the war the family removed to Cincinnati.

Education

Alfred was educated at private schools and Saint Dunstan's College, Prince Edward Island, 1861-65, and by private tutors 1865-71. The father wanted him to take up printing; the son preferred art. Alfred's art studies began at the University of Cincinnati School of Design, where he won a gold medal.

Career

After his studies at the Cincinnati School of Design, he moved to Philadelphia for a period of two years and worked with Frank Duveneck and H. F. Farny. After two years in Philadelphia he settled in New York City, about 1879. There he remained with an interval (1903 - 08) in Brookline, Massachussets, on an advertising contract, until his death.

There is in the work of some in this group the influence of Mariano Fortuny (a Spanish fashion designer), and also of Rico, Vierge, and the Japanese. Harry Wilson Watrous explained this in part by the fact that Blum, Brennan, and others spent much time in the studio of Humphrey Moore, friend of Fortuny. Brennan's assiduous courtship of the medium resulted in a large number of drawings, --7, 000 or more.

At the time of his death he was doing a series of water-colors reminiscent of his boyhood days. He also wrote magazine criticisms of pictures and books, both over his own name and over the pseudonym "Dirk Laurens. " But it is by his pen-and-ink drawings that his position in American art is made secure.

He was survived by his wife Lucy Lee and his five children, when, after he had been ill in St. Luke's Hospital for two months, death came to him in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York.

Achievements

• Alfred Brennan attained an unsurpassed skill in pen-and-ink illustrations. He was brilliant, with a vein of extravagant fancy, an assiduous cultivator of whimsicality as a fine art. In the eighties and nineties, when this country possessed a remarkable school of pen-and-ink artists: Abbey, Blum, Pennell, Reinhart, Lungren, and others, Brennan was a commanding figure. His illustrations, including delightful head and tail pieces, appeared in the Century (in the April 1903 number of which were published his pictures of the restored White House), St. Nicholas, Life, and other periodicals, as also in books, among which were F. Marion Crawford's Katharine Lauderdale (1894), Anthony Hope's Phroso and Charles Erskine Scott Wood's Maia (1918). Beside this, he had a very successful career as an illustrator for such national publications as The Century, Life, and St. Nicholas. He also illustrated a number of children's books.

Works

More photos

• book

  • HistoricalFindings Photo: Playing Going to See Grandma,Alfred Brennan,1889?,Children,Play,Dolls,Couch

    (8x12 inch Photographic Print from a high-quality scan of ...)

  • HistoricalFindings Photo: Playing Going for a Drive,Alfred Brennan,Children,Carriage,1889?,Dolls,Play

    (8x12 inch Photographic Print from a high-quality scan of ...)

  • HistoricalFindings Photo: What The Rich Man Believed,That which Really (it) was,Alfred Brennan,Fantasy

    (8x12 inch Photographic Print from a high-quality scan of ...)

  • HistoricalFindings Photo: Angel clasping 'Pax' Globe,boy Fishing,Letter W,Alfred Brennan,1893,Children

    (8x12 inch Photographic Print from a high-quality scan of ...)

  • HistoricalFindings Photo: of a Doll with a Pedigree,Alfred Brennan,1889?,Dolls

    (8x12 inch Photographic Print from a high-quality scan of ...)

  • HistoricalFindings Photo: Standing Before Royal Target,Empress,Alfred Brennan,1886?,Bears,Rebellion

    (8x12 inch Photographic Print from a high-quality scan of ...)

  • HistoricalFindings Photo: Alfred Brennan,1882,Hungry Cats Released,King,Queen,Princess Roared,Fear

    (8x12 inch Photographic Print from a high-quality scan of ...)

  • HistoricalFindings Photo: Photo of Reverse of Target,Alfred Brennan,1870-1921,Shield,Armament

    (8x12 inch Photographic Print from a high-quality scan of ...)

  • HistoricalFindings Photo: Examples of Planting in Ribbon Lines,Massing in Color,Alfred Brennan,1881?

    (8x12 inch Photographic Print from a high-quality scan of ...)

  • Katherine Lauderdale (Illustrated Edition)

    (First published in 1894.)

  • book

Views

Brenanns' flavor of individuality pervaded in all he did, even when he re-drew a photograph, --and there was much of that by artists in those days before the developed half-tone. He had a leaning toward classical subjects, illustrating, for example, a Greek play at Harvard.

Personality

Alfred Brennan had a picturesque personality, was fastidious, an eccentric dresser, a keen wit, and an expert pistol shot.

Quotes from others about the person

• Pennell pronounced him "the finest technician in America, " and added that "there is probably no one living who has a greater knowledge of the requirements and limitations and possibilities of process. "
  
  One writer states that Alfred Laurens Brennan created "his own technical virtuosity and an unconventional point of view which makes his work always arresting and intriguing. "

Interests

• Artists

  He was inspired by the European etched art of James McNeill Whistler, Charles Meryon, Sir Francis Seymour Haden and others.

Connections

On February 14, 1883, Alfred Brennan married Lucy Lee, a New Yorker, with whom he had five children.

Father:

John Fletcher Brennan

writer

Mother:

Evangeline (Williamson) Brennan

Wife:

Lucy Lee

colleague:

H. F. Farny

colleague:

Frank Duveneck

References

• The adventures of an illustrator, mostly in following his authors in America & Europe