George Loring Brown

George Loring Brown’s father did not approve of his son’s habit of “dawdling over a bit of paper,” and was happy when George apprenticed to a local wood engraver. After working as an engraver for four years, Brown sold his first painting for fifty dollars and decided to go to Europe and learn to paint. He copied the work of seventeenth-century French painter Claude Lorrain, earning him the nickname “Claude Brown.” He returned to Boston in 1834, but made many more trips to Italy, Germany, and France. Brown worked as an illustrator and painter, creating landscapes inspired by his surroundings in New England as well as his memories of Europe. (Landscapes of Europe and America 1834-1880, George Loring Brown, Robert Hull Fleming Museum, 1973)