Background

Mather Brown was born on October 7, 1761 and was a son of Gawen Brown, clock-maker, and Elizabeth (Byles) Brown, a daughter of Rev. Mather Byles of Boston. He was descended on his mother's side from Cotton Mather, Increase Mather, and John Cotton. His mother dying in his infancy, the boy was brought up by his aunts, the Misses Mary and Catharine Byles, for whom he had a life-long affection.

Education

Mather had lessons in painting from his Aunt Mary, an amateur, and from Gilbert Stuart, of whom he wrote, August 22, 1817, "I wish to know particularly how Mr. Stewart goes on. He was the first person who learnt me to draw at about 12 years of age at Boston. "

Career

After Mather Brown returned to Boston coming back from his trip extending through Worcester and Spring-field to Peekskilland with money earned from his miniatures he went in 1780 to Paris, carrying letters of introduction from Byles to Benjamin Franklin and Copley, the latter already in London.

In 1781 Brown became a pupil of West, making good progress and influential friends.

Brown rented (1784) a house, 20 Cavendish Square, and set up as portrait painter. He was styled, perhaps originally self-styled, "Historical Painter to His Majesty and the Duke of York. " Among his portraits of members of the royal family was the very fine full length of the Prince of Wales, later George IV, now at Buckingham Palace. His most important American portraits are of this period, as of Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson; of Charles Bulfinch, Sir William Pepperell, and Thomas Paine.

In 1784 he designed two historical pieces for a new church in the Strand. His "Marquis Cornwallis Receiving as Hostages the Sons of Tippo Sahib" was exhibited, admired, and engraved. He was among those invited to contribute paintings for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery.

Despite a large practise Brown found his fashionable establishment too expensive.

He failed to inherit, as he had expected to do, a considerable fortune from his father in Boston. In 1809, his lease having expired, he gave up his London studio. He painted for thirteen years at Manchester, Liverpool, and other provincial towns whence he wrote letters vividly descriptive of depressed conditions in the Napoleonic era. At the age of fifty he painted, to send home to his aunts, the excellent self-portrait formerly owned by Frederick L. Gay and now in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachussets.

From July 20, 1824, Brown's letters were again dated from London, 23 Newman St. , where, living upon a small annuity, he continued to paint industriously and to exhibit regularly at the Royal Academy. He was much interested in politics and in the Church of England. He was taken suddenly ill while visiting an art exhibition, dying soon afterward, May 25, 1831.

He was buried at St. John's Wood, Marylebone.

Achievements

• Mather Brown has been listed as a notable painter by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

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Views

Quotations: In 1777 he painted miniatures and sold wine in a trip extending through Worcester and Spring-field to Peekskill, whence he wrote to his aunts, "The Yankeys are going to Philadelphia; I believe I shall follow them. "

He wrote, in 1783: "I have exhibited four Pictures at the Exhibition (Royal Academy). The King and Queen were to see it yesterday. . I spent three weeks at Windsor where I often hunted with the King, and I have a bow from him. "

He wrote in 1801: "Every possible exertion which human Industry could do, I have done; and I have adopted the greatest Prudence in my Affairs, and yet have scarcely been able to live. "

Personality

Those familiar with his unpublished correspondence resent the imputation of "imbecility, " into which he has been said to have fallen in old age. His later letters reveal a disappointed but not embittered man of keen mentality, always industrious, courteous, and intensely interested in professional, political, and religious affairs.

Connections

Mather Brown never married.

Father:

Gawen Brown

clock-maker

Mother:

Elizabeth (Byles) Brown

References

• John Singleton Copley in America.
• Mather Brown: American Paintings