BENJAMIN CHAMBERS BROWN (1865-1942)

Born in Marion, Arkansas, Benjamin Brown was a landscape painter and printmaker, known for his Impressionist landscapes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and fields of poppies. His primary mediums were oil, lithography and etching, although he also did watercolor painting throughout his career.

Benjamin Brown was educated at the University of Tennessee and at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts with Paul Harney and John Fry. His early interest was photography. In 1890, accompanied by friend William Griffith, he went to Paris for a year of study with Jean Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant at the Academy Julian.

Returning to the United States, Brown lived in St. Louis, Little Rock, Arkansas, and Texas. His early specialities were portraiture and still lifes, but moving to Pasadena in 1896, he turned to local landscape and also painted the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert in Arizona.

Benjamin Brown biography courtesy Edan Hughes.