"John, Lewis BROWN (1829, 1890) - The Stop at the inn facing Mont-Saint-Michel. "
Oil on canvas signed lower left and dated 1878 lower right
Dimensions : 32 x 46 cm
With frame: 58 x 72 cm
The painter gives us here a most charming canvas.
Travelers stop at an inn by the sea, facing Mont Saint Michel.An amazon comforts herself by drinking a glass of wine while her fellow travelers relax and take care of feeding the horses. The key is removed and free.
John Lewis Brown was born in Bordeaux to a family of English dignitaries of the eighteenth century. Coming from Scotland, the Browns would have introduced the breed of pure English blood in France.
At the beginning of the century, the interest that is carried to Lewis Brown is more linked to his late rallying to Impressionism than to his first way. From his second pictorial impulse, he corresponds with Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Sisley, Isabey.Sa palette brightens up when he joins the Impressionists in Paris.
His ambition is to adore horses and to paint them with près.Si the painter gives himself masters, Géricault surpasses them all. He admires him for having "enjoyed himself in the real stables, among the pride, the brutality and everything that there is more horse in the horse".
His father is the owner of a castle in Bordeaux, a wine estate still in operation today. The stud farm he owns is his son's first step towards equine painting: he tirelessly copies and draws horses. The painter is self-taught, he works for two years at the Haras des Pins and looks at the work of Bonington, distant precursor of Impressionism towards whom he shows his sympathy.
He copies Cuyp, Karel, PhilipsWouverman, goes around Italy twice. In 1852, he spent a long stay in Copenhagen to respond to a commission from the French state, copying Rembrandt's Emmaus Pilgrims. The painter meets success by exhibitions in the provinces, receives a gold medal in Limoges. His birth makes him legitimate with the aristocracy that he portrays for a time.
Bibliography:
We owe most of the biographical information about the painter to his brother, Ralf Brown, inspector of Fine Arts in Paris. He talks directly with Léonce Bénédicte, curator of the Luxembourg Museum and editor of the artist's exhibition catalog.
*Léonce Bénédicte, John Lewis Brown, biographical and critical study, catalog of the engraved and lithographed work of the artist, Paris, Bookshop of Ancient and Modern Art, 1903.
Exhibition:
•Cat. exp. Gilberte Martin-Méry, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Pierre Schommer, John Lewis Brown, 1829-1890, [exhibition: Bordeaux, Gallery of Fine Arts, from Oct. 19. as of Nov. 9. 1953] Bordeaux, Delmas, 1953.
Museum:
•Paris, Louvre Museum, Orsay Museum
* Bordeaux, Museum of Fine Arts
• London, National Gallery,