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John Henri Isaac Browere was born in 1792, at 55 Warren St. , New York and was the son of Jacob Browere and Ann Catherine Gendon. He was of Dutch descent, and was one of the many claimants to heirship from Anneke Jans, through Adam Brouwer, who came from Holland to settle in Long Island in 1642. The man's name was really Berkhoven, but the name of his business of brewer clung to him and to his descendants.
Young Browere entered Columbia, but was not graduated. He studied art with Archibald Robertson, who had come to America from Scotland in 1791 with a commission from the Earl of Buchan to paint for his gallery at Aberdeen a portrait of Washington, and who later with his brother Alexander opened the Columbian Academy in Liberty St. , New York, where for thirty years they taught drawing and painting.
Browere's brother, captain of a trading vessel to Italy, took Browere abroad, and for nearly two years the young man traveled afoot in Italy, Austria, Greece, Switzerland, France, and England, "studying art, especially sculpture. " On his return from his trip to Europe back to New York, John Browere made a bust of Alexander Hamilton, from a miniature by Robertson. Experimenting to produce life masks by means of a molding material superior to that in general use, he at length perfected a composition and a process now unknown, and in 1825, his bust of Lafayette brought him fame.
Included among "specimens" bequeathed to his family were busts of John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Charles Francis Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Van Buren; Charles Carroll of Carrollton, De Witt Clinton; Generals Philip Van Cortlandt, Alexander Macomb, Jacob Brown; Commodore David Porter, who declared the mask to be "a perfect facsimile of my person, owing to the peculiar neatness and dexterity which guide his scientific operation"; Secretary of the Navy Samuel Southard, Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush, Justice Barbour, Henry Clay; Drs. Mitchill, Mott, and Hosack; Edwin Forrest and Tom Hilson, actors; Thomas Emmet, Col. Stone, Maj. Noah; that historic trio, Paulding, Williams, and Van Wart; Gilbert Stuart, and other famous men.
Dolly Madison at fifty-three was the only woman whose face was handed down by Browere. The times were not ripe for his plan of permanency in bronze. Abandoning his scheme because of lack of support, and because of what he called "the jealous enmity" of his fellow artists, Browere at one time considered giving some of his works to the South American republics, to incite them to a wider freedom.
A feud with Trumbull was later patched up. Browere made both friends and foes. When the press attacked him for rumored ill treatment of the aged Jefferson under the "process, " he retorted that his method was infinitely milder than the usual course, and obtained from Jefferson a satisfactory indorsement.
He died in 1834, after a few hours' illness of cholera, "at his house opposite the old milestone in the Bowery, " and was buried in the Carmine Street churchyard. On his deathbed, he directed that the heads of some of his most important works should be sawed off, and packed away for forty years. This was not done.
Some of the busts were shown at the Centennial of 1876, but it is doubtful whether their value as records was then appreciated.
His ambition was to create a portrait gallery of great characters, to be interpreted, he hoped, in bronze.
Quotations: That hope was not realized. "Pecuniary emolument, " he wrote to Madison, "has never been my aim. " And later, "I have expended $12, 087 in the procuration of the specimens I now have. "
A versatile individualist, of active mind, he not only wrote verses, but painted pictures, and profitably exhibited them; yet to his wrath he was kept out of the National Academy of Design.
A small water-color made by his son Alburtis of his father shows an energetic manly profile, with upstanding hair, stock, and coat collar. Alburtis knew Browere's process but, like his father, did not divulge the secret. He is said to have added to many of the life masks the draperies which perhaps enhanced them as busts, but which in no way contributed to their paramount virtue, historic authenticity.
At nineteen, John Henri Isaac Browere married Eliza Derrick of London, England. He left a wife and eight children. His second child, Alburtis (1814 - 87) became a painter of considerable note.
