Charles De Wolf Brownell, Plants, Bristol 1863 Watercolor Painting American Artist Charles DeWolf Brownell, 1863

Description

Charles De Wolf Brownell (American, 1822 - 1909)
Watercolor on paper depicting several plants in close proximity
Hand dated and … more Charles De Wolf Brownell (American, 1822 - 1909)
Watercolor on paper depicting several plants in close proximity
Hand dated and inscribed "Bristol-June 19-63"
Measures 5 1/4" x 8 3/8" on paper, framed to 13 3/4" x 17"
Provenance: Babcock Galleries. (also bearing label from Hirschl & Adler Fine Art)

Charles DeWolf Brownell (1822 – 1909)
An American landscape painter influenced by the works of Frederic E. Church and other mid-19th century American landscape painters. A resident of East Hartford, Connecticut from 1824 to 1860, New York City from 1860 to 1865, and Bristol, Rhode Island from 1878 until his death in 1909, Charles Brownell was born in Providence, Rhode Island. He became known for his landscape and still life paintings, especially a work titled Connecticut Charter Oak. He studied and practiced law in Hartford from 1850 to 1853, when, at age 31, he turned his attention to the arts, never returning to law. In 1853, he gave up a law career to devote himself to landscape painting, and studied in Hartford with Julius Theodore Bush and Joseph Ropes and exhibited at the National Academy of Design. He also spent seven consecutive winters painting tropical scenery in Cuba. He lived in Europe from 1866 to 1872. For many years he kept a strange diary in English words written in the Greek alphabet. Brownell traveled extensively over the course of his career. Brownell was fascinated by the natural world and spent his career traveling throughout New England in the summers and spending winters on the island of Cuba, and other tropical locals. He may have been influenced by the writings of the German naturalist and explorer Alexander Von Humboldt (1769-1859), who, among many influential writings, published The Island of Cuba which was translated into English in 1856, and included a chapter on Von Humboldt’s abhorrence of slavery. Before he embarked on his career as a landscape artist, Brownell published The Indian Races of North and South America, (1853), an illustrated account of the native american populations. One of Brownell’s most important contributions to the American landscape movement is his body of landscapes of the island of Cuba, where he was likely drawn by his family’s extensive holdings in numerous sugar and coffee plantations on the island, and where he stayed during his time there. He would winter on the island from 1853 to 1866, producing a comprehensive body of works composed of drawings, watercolors, oil studies and finished oil paintings. His Cuba paintings follow the tradition of en plein air painting that Thomas Cole first embraced during his European travels from 1829 to 1832, when he encountered these works by British artists John Constable and J. M. W. Turner, and the myriad European artists working in Italy at the time of his journey. Cole’s student Frederic Edwin Church would learn this artistic practice from his teacher Cole, and became a master of the plein air oil study in America and during his extensive travels in South America and other tropical locations. In New York, Brownell became acquainted with a number of the artists associated with the Hudson River School, including John F. Kensett, Thomas P. Rossiter, and Frederic Edwin Church. Charles De Wolf Brownell exhibited in New York at such institutions as the National Academy of Design, in 1861–62 and 1864–65, and at the Brooklyn Art Association, in 1863. DeWolfe Brownell seems to have stopped exhibiting after 1865. Brownell travelled extensively until the last years of his life. In the 1880s, he traveled throughout the Caribbean, including the islands of St. Kitts, Antigua, Martinique, St. Croix, Barbados, Grenada, and Trinidad, and in 1888 he made a visit to Church at Olana, Church’s famous estate in Hudson, New York. In the 1890s, Brownell made a return trip to Cuba, his first since 1866, and voyaged to Mexico, Jamaica, Venezuela, and Chile. less