Brown, Harrison Bird (1831-1915)
Harrison Bird Brown 1831 – 1915 8 Vermont Road 1893-1898
Harrison Bird Brown (1831 -1915) who began his career as a sign painter, was one of the most significant 19th century landscape painters of Maine. New England, USA. He was best known for his paintings of marine life of Maine, and the landscapes of the white mountains of New Hampshire:
https://www.whitemountainart.com/about-3/artists/harrison-bird-brown-1831-1915/
He was elected President of the Portland Society of Art in 1892 and moved to Upper Norwood to live with his daughter and son-in law Joel Herbert Seaverns MP shortly after their marriage. They lived in Upper Norwood from around 1892/3 until the late 1898s, first living in Vermont Road, then Harold Road, with both houses called “Portland”.
The artist exhibited at the National Academy of Design (New York City, 1858-1875), at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (1876); the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition (1876) and in Boston and London, England. Å retrospective of his work ““Vividly True to Nature,” was held at the Portland Gallery of Fine Arts in 2007:
https://www.tfaoi.org/aa/7aa/7aa32.htm
The exhibition essay advises:
“Throughout the second half of the 19th century, Harrison Bird Brown was the most prolific professional landscape artist in Portland, Maine. He drew his subject matter from local maritime and rural subjects, but also from his travels to Mount Desert, the Canadian Maritimes, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and Europe.”
”Brown continued to paint landscapes into the earliest years of the 20th century, producing both large-scale, dramatic compositions as well as intimate, gem-like cabinet pictures.”
Earle G Shettleworth, Maine State Historian, discussed Harrison Bird Brown in an illustrated talk with Raney Bench of the Mount Desert Island (Maine) Historical Society in October 2023:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMazGYSfJrnoyIVIzpd_5bA
Harrison Bird Brown is the inspiration for Maine Poet Jefferson Navicky’s 2023 novel-in-prose-poems “HEAD OF ISLAND BEAUTIFICATION FOR THE RURAL OUTLANDS
Harrison Bird Brown died in St George Hanover Square, London in 1915.