Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/359

 Italy in 1845, Brown studied largely at Rome from the works of Michael Angelo and Raphael, and thus enhanced his appreciation of style in art. After nine months the breaking down of his wife's constitution compelled their rapid return to England; but she died while they were passing through Paris in May 1845. She was buried in Highgate cemetery. In 1846, and somewhat later, Brown was in London collating authorities as to the compilation of a portrait of Shakespeare, in which, as the result attests, the artist went as near as possible to success. This picture, after being long in the possession of the artist's friend, Mr. Lowes Dickinson, was acquired by the Manchester Art Gallery in 1900. In Rome Brown had made a design for a very important picture of 'Wycliff reading his Translation of the Bible to John of Gaunt,' which in 1847 was completed in London and publicly shown at the 'Free Exhibition' in 1848; owing to its brilliance, extreme finish, and delicacy of tint and tone, as well as to a certain fresco-like quality, it attracted much attention, but it was an artificially balanced composition, and a certain 'German' air pervaded it.

This picture elicited from Dante G. Rossetti a somewhat juvenile letter, earnestly begging Brown to accept the writer as a pupil, and Brown generously took the somewhat unteachable young student under his charge. By this means Brown was brought into close relations with the seven artists who had just formed themselves into the Society of Pre-Raphaelite brethren. Three of the six artists—Millais, D. G. Rossetti, and the present writer—at once formally approached Brown with an invitation to join them; but Brown declined the invitation mainly because of the very exaggerated sort of 'realism' which for a short time at the outset was affected by the brotherhood. But until death parted them he was on very affectionate terms with five of the brethren—James Collinson and Mr. Holman Hunt in addition to the three already named—and upon the art of all of them his influence, as well as theirs upon his art, was not small. But in 1848 he was far in advance of the Pre-Raphaelites in his accomplishment as an artist, and their influence on him developed very gradually. Through 1848, the year in which the brotherhood was formed, it was not apparent at all. None of Brown's pictures, in fact, exhibited with signal effect that sort of realistic painting which is ignorantly supposed to have been the ne plus ultra of the Pre-Raphaelite faith, until the brotherhood was beginning to dissolve. In 1848 Brown painted 'The Infant's Repast,' which was simply a brilliant study of the effect of firelight, and was void of those higher and dramatic aims which distinguished the contemporary paintings of Millais, Rossetti, Collinson, and Mr. Holman Hunt. Brown's most realistic and 'actual' achievement was his 'Work' of 1852, and his 'Last of England' of 1855. It was highly characteristic of Brown that he carried into execution in these fine pictures the original principles of the brotherhood he refused to join. He had already made himself, however, so far an ally of the society that when their magazine, 'The Germ,' was published in 1850 he contributed poetry, prose, and an etching illustrating his conception of Lear and Cordelia's history.

Meanwhile, continuing in his own course. Brown produced 'Cordelia at the Bedside of Lear,' 1849, a wonderfully sympathetic, dramatic, and vigorous picture brilliantly painted; and 'Christ washing Peter's Feet,' 1851, partly repainted in 1856, 1871, and 1892, and now one of the masterpieces in the National Gallery at Millbank. 'Work,' which is now conspicuous in the public gallery at Manchester, was begun in 1852 and finished in 1868; it was painted inch by inch in broad daylight, in the street at Hampstead, and is a composition of portraits the most diverse. It illustrates not merely Brown's artistic knowledge, skill, and genius, but the stringency of his political views at the time, and is a sort of pictorial essay produced under the mordant influence of Thomas Carlyle and the gentler altruism of F. D. Maurice; it comprises likenesses of both these thinkers. After 'Work' was well advanced. Brown's masterpiece, the immeasurably finer 'Last of England,' took its place upon the easel. This type of Pre-Raphaelitism at its best is now a leading ornament of the public gallery at Birmingham. It has been said of it that 'Brown never painted better, and few pictures represent so well or so adequately the passionate hopes and lofty devotion of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood when it came into being.' Its two figures are exact and profoundly moving portraits of Brown himself and his second wife, while the incident it immortalises was witnessed by the painter while going to Gravesend to see Thomas Woolner [q.v.], then a Pre-Raphaelite brother, embark on his way to the Australian gold diggings. The immediate subject of his great picture may have been forced upon him by this incident. At the time the work was undertaken Brown's own pecuniary circumstances were much straitened and a collapse was threatening.

In succeeding years Brown's more