American Masterpieces from Dryads Green Gallery
(Please Scroll Down and Page Ahead--Catalogue is Alphabetical by Artist Last Name)
Artist Name:        Charles Francis Browne Artist Dates:         1859 - 1920
Painting Title:      Cushing's Island, Maine
Painting Date:       1896
Medium:              Oil on Panel
Signature:             Signed Lower Left
Provenance:          Private Collection
Condition:            Good
Size Unframed:     10 x 14
Size Framed:         17 x 21
Frame Condition:   Mint Reproduction
Artist Best Price:   $12,650
Our Price:             SOLD
Curator's Comments: Browne is a premier American landscapist who continued to realize his artistic transformation throughout a long career. He studied with Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the inspiration of Eakins extends into Browne’s own commitment. His first training was at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from 1882-84, and after Eakins came Paris, from 1887-90, where he studied at the École des Beaux Arts under Gérome and at the Academie Julian, along with the other young American artists of his generation. But Browne was focused on the landscape, and he took it from American luminism into impressionism and finally into his own unique style, elevated with a master’s technical treatment.

Brown was a traveler. After working as an instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago, he traveled West in the summer of 1895, touring Indian reservations in Arizona and New Mexico, with the sculptor Hermon Atkins MacNeil and writer Hamlin Garland. In 1910, Browne was Assistant Art Commissioner to Buenos Aires and Santiago, Chile, painting in both locations, and in Europe he also painted in Scotland’s Arran Islands. He went on to play an active role in California in 1915 as superintendent of the United States section of the Panama Pacific Exposition, and won an award for painting at the Expo, one of many prizes and memberships, which also included admission to the National Academy of Design.
But the center of Browne’s working career was the Eagle’s Nest Art Colony, where, along with the sculptor Lorado Taft, the portraitist Ralph Clarkson, Browne dominated in the landscape.  Following the Columbian Exposition of 1893, a group of artists and writers decided to remain in Chicago and continue to encourage each other's art. They chose to escape the crowded city by summering at a farm in Bass Lake, Indiana, until an outbreak of malaria forced them to seek a new location. Wallace Heckman, a Chicago attorney and patron of the arts, offered the use of his Oregon, Illinois summer estate, Ganymede Farm on the
Browne's At Mesnil-Aubry (8 x 12) sold for $6,000 in 2003
banks of the Rock River. The art colonists visited in the summer of 1898 and entered into a lease that ran for as long as one of the founding members remained alive. From that summer of 1898 until the death of the last member, Clarkson, in 1942, Eagle’s Nest was one of the most important of all American art colonies.
Browne was born in Natick, Massachusetts and like Clarkson, born in Ames, Massachusetts, he both taught and painted at Eagle’s Nest—soon marrying the sister of Lorado Taft, an artist in her own right. Their child was the only one to be born at Eagle’s Nest. Although highly influential in the Chicago area, these artists were eager to share their works with the local town of Oregon. They persuaded the architects of the Oregon Public Library to include plans for an art gallery—which they used for art showings and lectures. In 1918 the colony members began donating works of art for a permanent collection. By the time the last founding member of Eagle's nest had died, the library was in possession of 31 paintings and 25 sculptures—a historic treasure, and one which includes five masterpiece canvases of size by Browne.

The collection includes the work we show from this time, Valley of the Rock River, a downriver view of Oregon township that depicts Margaret Fuller Island from the south lawn of Ganymede, the site of the Heckman summer home, which became Lowden state park and eventually the Lorado Taft campus of Northern Illinois University. Also in the Library collection is Browne’s brilliant Chateau Gaillard, Petit Audley, France, which he presented to his brother-in-law as “an emotional souvenir, as he leaves for France to do the world's work, from his brother painter, Charles Francis Browne." Taft left in January, 1919, to join the corps of lecturer and entertainers who were providing recreation for the doughboys in France, and later in the same year, Browne, one of the best-known American artists of his time, was stricken with paralysis while at Eagle's Nest and died in 1920 at the age of 61.
Rock River Valley, Illinois
Cushing's Island, Maine
Our own canvas, dated 1896, which we are very proud to offer, shows a quite cove shore on Cushing’s Island, located in the sea reach of Portland, Maine. Another of New England’s rare and remote sea islands, like Deer Isle,  Isle Au Haut, Monhegan, and Mount Desert, Cushing’s, even today, is limited to 42 homes and has no commerce. The pencil inscription on the verso reads: "Mrs. T.C/ Parker/ Grande Hotel/ Cushing's Island/ Portland  Harbor, Maine/ 1896." Clearly, Browne found here what later attracted him to Eagle’s Nest, the isolation and natural beauty that his canvas reflects. Notice here the play of light and shadow, of shore and water, of green foliage and tree-tone-browns, a series of pairs that resonate upon each other—as the shadow on the shore. This is a very perfect American landscape indeed.
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