Harold Haven Brown, painter, printmaker, illustrator, mapmaker, and teacher, was born in Malden, Massachusetts in 1869. He attended the Lowell School of Design, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Massachusetts Normal Art School. After graduation from the Normal School Brown traveled to Paris where he studied with Jean Leon Gérôme at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and with J. P. Laurens at Académie Julian. He also studied museum work at the Musée de Cluny, Musée du Louvre, and the Musée du Luxembourg.

After his return to the United States Brown was employed as a high school art teacher in Boston and New York. On November 4, 1897, he wed fellow artist Florence Bradshaw. They moved to Chicago and then to Indianapolis, Indiana were he was director of the John Heron Institute from 1913 to 1921. In 1919 they visited Provincetown, Massachusetts, where they would settle in 1923.

Brown worked in color woodcut and watercolor and was a noted mapmaker. He authored books and articles on pictorial, decorative, and mechanical drawing and on calligraphy. He and Florence were active in founding the Provincetown Art Association and Museum where he served as president from 1926 to 1932.

His work was exhibited at the 1901 Panama-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; the Brooklyn Museum, NY; the John Herron Art Institute, IN; and with the American Watercolor Society, the American Rotary Watercolor Society, the National Society of Craftsmen, the Architectural League, and the Provincetown Art Association.

Harold Haven Brown died in Provincetown in 1932.