The art of John Henry Brown

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2004 by Anne Verplanck

The growth in popularity of miniatures, which swelled between 1790 and 1810, followed general trends toward close familial relationships, and more privacy and intimacy in Europe and the United States. Often as expensive as small oil portraits, miniatures were generally painted in watercolors on ivory, a costly material. (1) Patrons chose how they wanted their miniatures presented. At different times options included bracelets, brass or gold lockets, wooden frames, and leather cases (see Pls. VI, X). Historically, most miniatures were made to be worn next to the body, reinforcing the physical and emotional closeness between the sitter, the wearer, and the viewer.

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Conventional wisdom suggests that miniatures rapidly went out of fashion following the invention of the daguerreotype about 1839, since a miniature was significantly more expensive and more highly colored than a daguerreotype and took several sittings to complete. However, in a few places, notably Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston, South Carolina, it endured despite the daguerreotype. A midsized daguerreotype (about 4 1/4 by 3 1/2 inches) with the largest amount of hand-coloring cost from $3 to $6 in 1855. (2) At the same time most of the miniatures painted by John Henry Brown (Pls. I, Ia) in Philadelphia ranged in price from $100 to $250. (3) Although Philadelphians were intrigued by the invention of the daguerreotype, photographic portraits did not fully meet their needs during the 1840s and 1850s. (4)

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Brown was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and began his artistic career in 1836 in the Lancaster painting room of Arthur Armstrong (1798-1851). Armstrong painted portraits as well as history and landscape paintings, but focused mainly on sign and fancy painting. In 1839 Brown struck out on his own "as a Portrait, Sign, & Fancy Painter; to which I added Miniature Painting, a branch not taught by Mr. Armstrong, and at which I had been working at home, on Sundays." For artistic instruction. Brown also relied on The Complete Young Man's Companion ... (Manchester, England, 1801). He gradually shifted from "a Painter of all work" to painting miniatures exclusively in 1844. (5) Although he first took a room in Philadelphia in 1844 (6) and resided in that city much of his life, he retained strong ties to Lancaster. (7)

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During the 1840s and 1850s, Brown's miniatures were much in demand. He noted in 1852:

I am blessed beyond my deserts. As an Artist I believe myself much
overrated. My least price now is one hundred dollars for a picture,
however small. I have at present, at least two years work engaged, and
have within the last four months refused about a years work. (8)

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During most of the years between 1846 and 1860, Brown painted from twenty to thirty miniatures per year, primarily of Philadelphians and those in surrounding communities. (9) Other sitters resided in North Carolina, Missouri, and Kentucky, where it was more difficult to find a miniature painter. However, some clients came from cities with active miniature artists, such as Charleston and New York City. This broad geographic base suggests that Brown's miniatures met the needs of elites whose taste was becoming more national, rather than regional, in scope.

By the mid-1840s, Brown regularly relied on daguerreotypes in part or in full for his miniatures of the living and the dead. (10) A critic noted the advantages of daguerreotypes as "studies and as aids to the memory, the better artists have found their work in greater demand, as they have been able to impart to them higher excellence." He then went on to describe one of Brown's miniatures:

It was painted entirely from a daguerreotype, and from recollection, yet
the truth of representation is startling, and infinitely superior to any
daguerreotype, as, indeed, good painting always is and must be. The hand
of an artist is guided by his mind--by his thought and feeling--and if
this be true, they communicate to his work the character, the real
meaning of the original, with far more force than can be obtained by
mere mechanical accuracy. (11)

Some of Brown's miniatures were even housed in daguerreotype cases (see Pl. VIII), which reinforced the connection between the two mediums. Whether he painted sitters partly or entirely from life. Brown's works incorporated daguerreotypic attributes that contributed to the appeal of his work.

Through political connections, exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Artists' Fund Society in Philadelphia, and the extensive kinship networks of sitters, Brown attracted a broader range of patrons than previous miniaturists in Philadelphia. (12) Like the sitters for earlier miniatures by artists such as Benjamin Trott (see Pl. VI) and Anna Claypoole Peale (see Pl. VII), many of Brown's patrons in the 1840s and 1850s had ties to eighteenth-century Philadelphia's social, economic, and political elites. (13) Mercantile fortunes predominated among antebellum Philadelphia miniature subjects. Lawyers, physicians, and university and military officials are well represented in miniatures, as are local, state, and national political figures. However, only a few families who derived their wealth from industry were interested in this art form. Miniatures appealed to a broadening group of Philadelphians who had the wealth and the interest in having their portraits produced in this private, expensive form. (14)