Ford Madox Brown

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Ford Madox Brown drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1852

Ford Madox Brown (born April 16, 1821 in Calais , † October 11, 1893 in London ) was an English painter from the Pre-Raphaelite circle .

Life

Career

Ford Madox Brown was born in Calais, the son of a ship chandler. Brown first studied one semester at the Academy of Bruges under Albert Gregorius and went to Ghent in 1836. There Pieter Van Hanselaere was his teacher for two years and Brown exhibited in the local salon. In 1838 Gustave Wappers' call convinced him to move to Antwerp, where he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts together with Joseph van Lerius , Charles Verlat and Godefried Guffens . Here Brown was impressed by the paintings of 17th century painters.

From 1840 he lived in Paris and studied the paintings of Velazquez and Rembrandt and the works of Delacroix in the Louvre . In 1845 he took a trip to Italy via Basel and stayed in Milan, Florence and Rome , where he met the painters Friedrich Overbeck and Peter Cornelius from the circle of the Nazarenes , whose artistic ambition was to focus on painting from the Middle Ages and Orientation towards the Renaissance impressed him just as much as Holbein's painting in Basel had been before .

Ford Madox Brown: Chetham's Life's Dream AD 1640 , mural, Manchester
Ford Madox Brown: glass window for Morris & Co.

In 1846 Ford Madox Brown settled in London . Brown met Dante Gabriel Rossetti in March 1848 and taught him painting for a while. However, Rossetti rejected the academic teaching method. There is a painting that the two made by Jane Burden together . In 1849/1850 he was in Rome again. There he became a member of the German Art Association . Between 1849 and 1853 he exhibited his paintings, which in addition to Rossetti also particularly influenced Frederick Sandys (1829-1904) artistically, together with those of the Pre-Raphaelites . Brown could have become a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood , but preferred to continue to work independently from this movement. He contributed texts and an illustration to the publication of the brotherhood The Germ .

In 1861 he was one of the founding members of the company Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company of William Morris , for which he designed glass windows, tiles and furniture until 1875, when Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898) took over his post. In 1878 Brown was commissioned to furnish Manchester City Hall with six, later expanded to twelve, large frescoes depicting the history of the city. From then on, this large company claimed him extensively in his artist existence. From the point of view of his contemporaries, Ford Madox Brown was assigned to the realist movement ; in the History of Modern Painting published by Dowsen, Muther, Greene & Hillier at the end of the 19th century , he is referred to as "the English Adolph Menzel ".

family

Ford Madox Brown: Pretty Baa-Lambs , 1851/1859

In 1844 Brown married his cousin Elizabeth Bromley, who died two years later in 1846, leaving behind a daughter, Lucy Madox Brown . Emma Hill came to him as a model. She was an uneducated servant, and Brown taught her to write and read. Their daughter Catherine Emily was born in 1850. The two are portrayed together in his painting Pretty Baa-Lambs . They finally married on April 5, 1853. The first son, Oliver, was born in 1855 and a second son, Arthur, followed in 1856. In 1857 Arthur died of meningitis. His daughter Cathy also became a painter and married the music critic Franz Hueffer . Oliver, nicknamed Nolly, became a talented artist and poet who exhibited and published his work. In 1874 Oliver died of blood poisoning. Brown then fell into a depression and withdrew. He built a shrine for Oliver in his house. A grandson of Ford Madox Brown, Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), became a well-known writer and one of his great-grandchildren was the future British Home Secretary Frank Soskice . Brown's diary, kept from 1847 to 1850 and from 1854 to 1858, provides a rare glimpse into the life of a painter in the 19th century.

social commitment

Ford Madox Brown, photography

His social responsibility shows in both his life and his work. It was said of him that he rejected luxury and privilege. In the late 1850s there were drawing classes at Workers College. In 1859 he set up a soup kitchen with his wife Emma. He was also concerned about the famine in Lancashire cotton mills in 1862, which were unable to export their wares due to the American Civil War, and donated money to help workers. In 1866 he set up an office for the unemployed in Manchester to help them find work. He had read Thomas Carlyle's book Past and Present .

Although agnostic, he attended church services and used Bible quotes in his work. In Oxford he met John Everett Millais while researching the Wycliffe translation of the Bible and stayed with him. This painting was also bought by the pious Thomas Combe.

His wife Emma died in 1890. Ford Madox Brown died of gout on October 6, 1893 and was buried in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery in London.

plant

Ford Madox Brown: The Last of England , 1852/1855
Ford Madox Brown: Work , 1852/1863

Ford Madox Brown's painting shows a realistic and decisive style, his work encompasses both large-format historical subjects and themes of modern life and its contemporary social concerns. In 1865 Brown exhibited his works in London as a whole; they were all bought by English manufacturers and merchants.

His paintings The Last of England and Work , which he began at the same time in 1852, but did not finish until 1855 and 1865 after various interruptions, are important. The title The Last of England refers to the wave of emigration to Australia; the models for the emigrant family were the painter himself, his wife Emma and his two children. The work was acquired by the Art Museum in Birmingham in 1891 . Works , finished in 1865, is believed to be the first modern representation of workers after Courbet's painting Die Steinklopfer (1849). It is part of the Manchester Art Gallery .

literature

Web links

Commons : Ford Madox Brown  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer. Manchester City Art Gallery. September 24 - January 29, 2012 in: NCAW publication, Volume 11, Issue 3, 2012, footnote 3
  2. ↑ Lexikon der Kunst (1961), p. 353
  3. ^ Ford Madox Brown in Art Archive
  4. ↑ Jane Burden by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown
  5. ^ Friedrich Noack : The Germanness in Rome since the end of the Middle Ages . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1927, Volume 2, p. 107
  6. ^ Pre-Raphaelites (1973/74), p. 43
  7. ^ Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource: Ford Madox Brown
  8. ^ Ford Madox Brown in: Muther, Dowsen, Greene, Hillier: The History of Modern Painting . P. 581ff
  9. ^ Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite radical who shocked the Victorians. First exhibition in 50 years sheds new light on the man whose work was described by the establishment as 'grotesque'. "The Guardian", Friday 23 September 2011
  10. ^ Ford Madox Brown Biography in Manchester Galleries
  11. ^ Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource: Ford Madox Brown
  12. ^ Working Men's College
  13. ↑ Cotton famine in Lancashire during 1862 ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cottontown.org
  14. ↑ The First Translation of the Bible into English (Wycliffe Reading His Translation of the New Testament to His Protector, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, in the Presence of Chaucer and Gower, His Retainers)
  15. ^ Pre-Raphaelites (1973/74), p. 52ff.
  16. ^ Ford Madox Brown: Work (1852/65), Manchester Art Gallery
personal data
SURNAME Brown, Ford Madox
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English painter
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1821
PLACE OF BIRTH Calais
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1893
Place of death London