(Palace of Fine Arts, Panama Pacific International Exposition)

Benjamin Brown

A beautiful example of early pure aquatint printed in colors. The architecture of the PPIE Palace of Fine Arts is illuminated with expert tonality, no doubt informed by Brown's background in Impressionist oil painting. Benjamin Chambers Brown began his art career in the late 1880s, but it wasn't until 1914 that he began working in intaglio printmaking.

Brown rarely dated his prints, and much of his imagery from the early 1910s onward was of landscapes and architecture in California and Europe. To estimate the creation of this print, our research led to the Encyclopedia of Askansas, whose excellent biography of the artist noted that his hometown of Marion, Arkansas, held its centenniel anniversary in 1925. To honor the event, Brown presented the town with a painting titled "Sunset, Grand Canyon, Arizona." It's assumed that this aquatint was done around that time.

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.

Brown was educated at the University of Tennessee and at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts where he studied 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, he 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.

In 1914, he began doing etchings, and with his brother, Howell, co-founded the Printmakers of Los Angeles, later known as the California Society of Printmakers. Exhibition venues included the Seattle Exposition in 1909 and the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. He was a member of the California Art Club and the Pasadena Society of Artists.

Benjamin Brown died in Pasadena, California in 1942.