“Mr. Browne’s color is good. He draws beautifully: technically he is a master…Mr. Browne is without question one of the most accomplished Western painters and he is one of the most popular.”[1] “He is one of the group of painters and sculptors who have added greatly to Chicago’s fame, and a man so lovable and charming…Seeing the world with a poet’s eye, he has put the rhythm and harmony that lurks in many a sweep of country into paint.”[2]

 Charles Francis Browne was born on May 21, 1859, in Natick, Massachusetts, to a family with a long history in New England. His mother was Emmeline Wetherbee, and his father was George Warren Browne, a builder and contractor.[3] In 1865 the family moved to Waltham, Massachusetts, the place Browne would always think of as home. He had three siblings. The oldest was George who became the headmaster of The Browne and Nichols School in Cambridge, Massachusetts; a sister, Emmie, died in childhood, and a younger brother, Roger, was later a foreman at the E. Howard Watch Factory in Waltham.

In his second year of high school Browne was afflicted with appendicitis (called inflammation of the bowels). Sick for nearly two years, he never returned to school but rather began working as a clerk in a Boston hat store, a job for which he had little aptitude. After several years of work, he ill enjoyed he started at a design job for Forbes Lithography Company along with a youthful Edmund Charles Tarbell (1862-1938), who was also an artist soon to make his name.[4] In 1882, Browne began taking evening art classes at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He specialized in stained glass mostly to placate his father with a craft that appeared most practical. After working during the day and taking classes at night for two years, however, the young artist was still unable to pass the rigorous examination in anatomy required to enter the life classes.

Browne moved to Philadelphia in 1885 where he enrolled full-time at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, almost immediately taking anatomy under Dr. W. W. Keen.[5] Browne’s earlier “practical” training came in service, as he often earned the needed finances to pay for art classes by taking on extra jobs at various local glass window establishments.[6] Browne became acquainted with the New Church during his student years at the Academy. He boarded at 1718 Green Street along with Enoch Price, Fred Waelchli, Carl Theophilus Odhner, and N. Dandridge Pendleton, students of theology at the Academy of the New Church in Bryn Athyn. Browne had given up his Unitarian background to become a member of the New Church.[7] He was active in the church’s Cherry Street Society and while still a student at the PAFA was asked to teach drawing in the Academy School for the fall of 1885, in essence, becoming their first art teacher.[8]

Browne continued his artistic studies with the major instructors at the school—Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), Thomas Pollock Anshutz (1851-1912), and Thomas Hovenden (1840-1895)—until the spring of 1887. He seems to have been quite successful, as he was awarded the Second Toppin Prize at the 1887 annual Academy exhibition.[9] After spending the summer of 1887 painting landscapes and enjoying the company of well-known artist Abbott H. Thayer (1849-1921) in Rockport, Massachusetts, the young artist sailed for France in the fall, ready for more intense study, having convinced his parents that support of a thirty-some year old budding artist would be a worthwhile venture.[10]

In Paris Browne entered the Académie Julian, to study with Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836-1911).[11] He shared rooms with Wilton Lockwood (1862-1914) also a Massachusetts native. Lockwood already spoke French and Browne was working to learn the language quickly as it was a requirement to sit for entrance at the Ecolé des Beaux-Arts where he wished to study.[12] It was likely in late spring of 1888 that he took the entrance examinations. His previous studies served him well as he placed 15th among the eighty accepted from the four hundred prospective students and by June he had already begun his studies with Jean Leon Gérôme (1824-1904).[13] That July Browne sketched landscapes in Écouen, a rural area about thirteen miles north of Paris, with the noted sheep painter August Friedrich Schenck (1828-1901) offering criticism.[14] In 1889 Browne had one of his works accepted into the Universal Exposition in Paris[15] and the following summer he conducted his own sketching classes in Auvers.[16] Attempting to remain practical under the financial support of his parents he also entered classes with Pierre-Victor Galland (1822-1892).[17] Browne also shared his atelier with American sculptor Cyrus Edwin Dallin (1861-1944), who even at that time was working on themes of Native Americans.[18] In his last year at the École, he had work accepted for the Glasgow Exhibition and Gérôme placed seven of his sketches in a student exhibition with the other ateliers. It is clear that also in this last year Browne had begun to think about using his training back home in the States. While he continued working primarily with Gérôme, he also began to study decoration, a more dependable commercial trade, with P. V. Galland.[19]

By December of 1891, Browne had returned to the States and was working out his finances to go to New York City.[20] However, before this transpired Browne was drawn to Chicago, as was nearly every other accomplished young artist in America, to assist with the preparations for the World’s Columbian Exposition. Browne had met a fellow École student, George Lawrence Schreiber (1862-1940), while visiting New York City and Schreiber asked Browne to join him in Chicago for a possible mural commission. The commission came through and Browne was in Chicago by March of 1892 with Schreiber to complete the mural decorations for the Children’s Building.[21]

Chicago during the World’s Columbian Exposition was a heady place for any artist. The exposition brought in over 21.5 million paid admissions and its preparation had created a gathering place for the best of American artists in a city ripe for cultural growth. Towering figures of the art world such as Daniel Burnham (1846-1912), Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), Daniel Chester French (1850-1931), Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) and others all worked on the exposition plans. In the words of one scholar, “For Chicagoans, the fair became a landmark in the history of their city, changing former opinions of Chicago as ‘Porkopolis,’ and opening up a new era of civic commitment and cultural flowering in the Midwest.”[22] Browne’s career following his move to Chicago was deeply shaped by the kind of cultural desires and expectations the exposition left in its wake—and the mixture of these expectations with the disappointments experienced as a result of the deep economic depression that followed.

On one hand, artists including Browne felt sharply the lack of patronage and cultural support after the ebullience of exposition activities. Browne seems to have scraped around a bit looking for his place in the community.[23] He accepted a position as an art instructor at Beloit College in the fall of 1893.[24] This position was dropped in the ensuing economic depression, though he was re-appointed the following fall to teach cast drawing, life drawing, and painting classes.[25] While Chicago artists responded for the most part to this economic and cultural depression by banding together in various ways, Browne also relied heavily on his involvement in the New Church, the church of the Swedenborgian faith in the United States. As he wrote to a fellow New Church member, “The Church has been the one thing that has held me in this hopelessly unartistic city.”[26] His association with the Swedenborgian faith was deeply held and he remained closely associated with his church friends for the remainder of his life.[27] He was active in the founding of the New Church in Glenview, just north of Chicago, attended the dedication of its first building in 1894, and taught an art class there that Winter.[28]

Though Browne bemoaned the lack of artistic support in his newly adopted city, he, like many others, was invigorated by the possibilities suggested by the temporary artistic community experienced during the exposition. The remaining artists like Browne felt a heightened awareness of the benefits and the possibilities especially available to a young, becoming city like Chicago. There was a flush of community activity marked by closeness and an insistence that the native area, Chicago, could and should be fertile ground for artistic inspiration. Practicing artists created organizations to support and provide camaraderie for each other as well as to promote regional art. Browne was one of the artists most active in such matters, matched in his enthusiasm and dedication by a core of fellow Chicagoans that included the sculptor Lorado Taft (1860-1936), the painters Ralph Elmer Clarkson (1861-1942) and Oliver Dennett Grover (1861-1927), and the writer Hamlin Garland (1860-1940).[29]

A selected listing of Browne’s artistic and civic activities in Chicago, equally matched by these other artists, is indicative of this climate and of Browne’s thorough involvement and leadership in its creation. He was a founder of the Central Art Association (this organization will be treated in-depth later); a founder of the Cosmopolitan Club of Chicago and served as its secretary and president;[30] he served several terms as trustee and president of the Chicago Society of Artists;[31] a charter member of the Cliff Dwellers; director and vice president of the Chicago Watercolor Club;[32] he served two terms as the director of the Municipal Art League; an honorary member of the Palette & Chisel Club; secretary and president of the Society of Western Artists;[33] a founder and trustee of the Arts Club of Chicago; and board member and president of the Artists’ Guild.[34]

One of the earliest widely influential social communities to form amidst the Chicago art world in the void of the exposition was the “Little Room,” of which Browne was a founding member. While the date this group began their meetings has come into question, current research dates it to 1897. The group took its name from the short story by Madeleine Yale Wynne (1847-1918), also one of the founding members, in which a little room appears or disappears depending on the need of the visitor.[35] This seemed to fit the character of the Chicago group as well. Inclusion was congenial, though held to persons of artistic endeavors and interests. As one writer has described the group, “The Little Room was neither exclusively intellectual nor exclusively artistic; its importance lay not in its production of art, but in the degree to which it both comprised and symbolized the largest official acceptance of the arts as a living cultural force which Chicago had been able to achieve.”[36]

While such activities were social in demeanor, they constituted the flush of esprit des corps at the basis of much more rigorously artistic endeavors such as the Central Art Association, formed in 1894, of which Browne was also a founding member. The Association’s motto, “For the promotion of good art and its dispersion among the people,” echoed perfectly the kind of civic mindedness that shaped nearly every activity in Browne’s career and he jumped into the work of the Association with a true belief it’s the goals. The organization offered those institutions that joined as members traveling exhibitions complete with lectures and the opportunity to purchase works. They wrote pamphlets to train the Midwestern audience in the appreciation of the arts and provided a “bureau of criticism” for young artists in remote towns to receive suggestions about their own work.[37] As Taft’s sister recalled:

“A group of congenial spirits zealous for reform gathered often in his Taft’s studio….Hamlin Garland…Charles Francis Browne….They were exhilarated by the feeling that Chicago was new ground where they could plant seeds that would enrich the city. Its newness was an incentive to creativeness. It gave them confidence and quickened their energies as an old city might not have done. They started a traveling art exhibit, spending hours repacking boxes of paintings to send out again to the different towns of the middle west. Lorado, with Hamlin and Charles, who called themselves the triumvirate, wrote little pamphlets on Impressionism, and felt, oh, so liberal and progressive for daring to introduce such radicals as Monet, Theodore Robinson, and Twachtman, who ‘painted shadows blue’! They felt they were making a contribution to the community and they were woven into the warp and weft of the big city and became part of it.”[38]

Browne was indeed one of the ‘Triumvirate.’ In the pamphlet of which Taft’s sister spoke, “Impressions on Impressionism,” Browne took the voice of the ‘conservative painter’ in a conversation with Taft as the ‘sculptor’ and Garland as the ‘novelist.’[39] Browne’s viewpoint would be easy to understand as he protested “vigorously against being called an impressionist” yet he got in altogether too much sunshine for an artist who insists on belonging to the purely conventional school.”[40] While the writers did espouse the acceptance of Impressionism, they did so within nativist terms—or terms empathetic to the regional artist. According to the ‘conservative painter’ the impression of the scene was good, so long as it expressed what the artist felt, “nature seen with reverential eyes.”[41] However, he continued that, “When you see the technique, it’s bad; when you feel too much color, it’s bad—when anything is vague and incomprehensible it’s bad.”[42] To the ‘conservative painter’ art had to be about more than formal concerns as well. As he admonished, “Painting is more than paint, and sunlight is more than orange and purple, and a landscape as well as a figure means more than a symphony of color, a pang in grey, or a ‘whoop in violet’. We painters must think beyond our tools or we won’t do much.”[43]

While the three critics supported Impressionism as long as the style was a means and not an artistic end, they all agreed that what was disturbing about Impressionism was its favoring of foreign styles and subject matter. Browne was an enthusiastic apologist for regional artists working in the native scene. As the ‘conservative painter’ of the pamphlet, he asserted that, “We will never have any home art with the real home flavor unless we are in close touch with what’s around us here….Is a Brittany peasant more to us than everything else? Haven’t we outdoor subjects in our fields, or our mountains, by our glorious lakes, on the shores of our loud sounding seas? We assuredly have. American art must be developed by the artists in happy sympathy with American surroundings, and supported by a public loving the home things more than imported foreign sentiment.”[44]

Certainly with this sentiment in mind in 1894 Browne, Hermon Atkins MacNeil (1866-1947) and Edward Kemeys (1843-1907), both sculptors, spent part of their Summer at the Chippewa reservation in Wisconsin making sketches of the American equivalent of the “Brittany peasant.”[45] It appears from this trip a bust of Browne by MacNeil resulted as it was exhibited later that October in the American Annual exhibition at the Art Institute.[46] The two had become fast friends, probably helped along by the fact they were both Massachusetts men in the West. Browne brought back a great many sketches for completion in his studio. They varied from indoor depictions of the Indians to outdoor landscapes that incorporated everyday Indian life.[47]

Extending this new interest, the following summer Hamlin Garland, MacNeil and Browne went on a tour of Indian lands in Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico, each taking large numbers of sketches and notes and returning with the requisite “Indian curios.”[48] Upon their return Browne and MacNeil held a reception in their new studio on the seventeenth floor of the Marquette building to display to the Chicago art world their new-found “American” subject matter.[49] Profusely decorated with artifacts from their trip west, the studio was for some time the subject of delight to its visitors. The curios were so numerous that one critic commented the artists likely hadn’t any funds left and the Indians likely had no wearing apparel or bedding left. So much material was brought back that the critic stated the Art Institute would be filled if it were put on canvas or cast in bronze.[50]

Unfortunately for Browne, he was about to lose his best friend and studio mate to good fortune. At the end of November it was announced MacNeil had won the Rinehart Scholarship from the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. The prize carried with it use of a villa, travel expenses and a $1,000 per year stipend. MacNeil for his part was said to have mixed feelings at his good fortune and sadness of leaving behind his adopted city and good friends.[51] MacNeil was never to return to Chicago, moving instead to New York after his studies in Rome.[52]

Inspired by the Native American, Browne completed several portraits, unusual in his oeuvre, in addition to landscapes and Indian genre scenes. His portraits are typical of the accepted approach to Indian portraiture. In Nai-u-chi (Sid Richardson Collection of Western Art, Ft. Worth), Browne labeled the portrait with the sitter’s name, tribe, tribal position, and date. Naiuchi is depicted bust-length, in three-quarter view, and rendered in the broad brushwork and strong anatomy that shows clear evidence of his figure training under Gérôme.[53] Naiuchi was a well-known Indian to Anglos because of his position as the elder brother, or chief priest, in the Bow Society, the most prestigious and secretive of the Zuni esoteric orders. The Bow Society, and Naiuchi, had been written about extensively by ethnologists of the time, particularly by the ethnologist Frank Cushing, who had gained great notoriety among Anglos for his initiation into the Bow Society.[54]

Browne emulated the idea of local subject matter in his more typical genre, landscape, as well. While his travels to Europe and the coastal Massachusetts provided material for numerous landscapes, his greatest source of inspiration came from participation in summer sketching outside Chicago.[55] In 1894 Browne, tired from his travels among the Ojibwa, was coerced into joining a group of sculptors, being the only painter, including Taft, MacNeil, Charles Mulligan (1866-1916), Elizabeth (Carrie) Brooks MacNeil (1866-1944), Edward Kemeys, Julia Bracken Wendt and Bessie Potter Vonnoh at Bass Lake, Indiana, for the summer.[56] For the next three years a growing congenial group of artists summered there, strengthening personal and artistic bonds.[57] Browne’s work from these local areas aroused critical attention equally for their local subject matter as for their style.[58] A reviewer from 1898 noted, “Even the conservative painter, Charles Francis Browne, is represented by some landscapes in the exhibitions this winter that suggest his ability to find the atmosphere he goes in search of every summer. Bass Lake… is a dreamy symphony of poetical motion and color.”[59] His material from these summer outings was sparking success in his career as in 1898, the prestigious Arché club, purchased his Moonlight, Bass Lake, Indiana (location unknown) from the annual exhibit of Chicago artists at the Art Institute.[60]

When a malaria scare at Bass Lake persuaded the artists to find other summer digs, they took up an offer by Chicago attorney and art patron, Wallace Heckman, to settle on land within his summer estate, Ganymede Farm. Founded July 1, 1898, the Eagle’s Nest Art Colony, overlooking the Rock River just four miles north of Oregon, Illinois, was chartered by an initial group of eleven that included Browne, Taft, Grover, and Clarkson.[61] The group found the landscape particularly suited to their tastes with broad sweeping skies, the Rock River below a long series of bluffs and thickly forested sections:

“they used the whole panorama as their studios. They found plenty of subjects, such as the long-remembered ‘vervaine year,’ when all our gentle hills were clothed in blue and lavender.”[62]

The camaraderie that had begun at Bass Lake was even more closely felt, as on May 21, 1898, Browne was married to Doctoria Turbia Taft Newberry, one of Taft’s sisters.[63] Likewise, another of Taft’s sisters, Zulime, a sculptress[64], married Hamlin Garland.[65] Taft, Clarkson, and Browne all built permanent structures at the camp; Browne’s cottage, complete with stone fireplace and a second floor, was located just east of the camp house.[66]

While the artists certainly sketched and sculpted, the camp was equally known for its various costume parties, boating trips, dinners, and general summer diversions to be expected from a group of congenial, creative, artistic people on break from the demands of the city.[67] As one scholar has noted, “While the rest of the country was sweltering in trailing skirts, starched shirts, high collars and ties, these colonists were enjoying the most casual of casual wear. The women wore their hair in braids, Indian fashion, and wore short skirts and dresses with low necks. Taft and Grover sported the black beret of Paris student days, while Charles Francis Browne wore wide corduroy trousers.”[68] Browne’s personal connection to the colony was strengthened in 1900 when his only son, Charles, Jr., was born at the camp. Charlie, from all accounts, equally enjoyed the freedom of the camp and the opportunity for pranks and high-spirited childhood adventures it offered.

Browne’s life in Chicago as well became more centered in 1898 with the completed construction of the Fine Arts Building.[69] Artist’s studios were located on the 10th floor and nearly every other kind of artistic endeavor filled the remaining floors. Chicago had a center for its artistic culture and Browne’s studio was located there until 1909.[70] Again, this center was neither economic nor artistic only, but equally social and Browne seemed to join into the impromptu events enthusiastically. As Anna Morgan remembered, “The Fine Arts Building… was a blending of the social with the artistic life in the studios that was truly delightful… visitors were frequent… it was a show place in the town, a rendezvous where you were sure to see interesting people… on the 10th floor, which was exclusively an artists’ colony… not only afternoon teas but night spreads, generally in the Browne studio, were of weekly occurrence… there was an informality, a comradeship that is sweet to remember.”[71]

Browne increased the power of his artistic thoughts by writing. He began contributing in 1895 as an art critic for the Chicago Sunday Tribune and as a writer for The Arts and Arts for America (Central Art Association publications, once superceding the other). In 1897 Browne served as editor (until 1900) of Brush and Pencil magazine.[72] The publication format included several lengthy articles about local artists—often written by Browne himself—that are still notable for their clear writing, insightful criticism, and accurate information. The issues also included reviews of exhibitions and events in the Chicago art world, good coverage of national art events, and advertising and announcements from the commercial art community. Complementing this role of critic, Browne also served on an extensive number of juries for local exhibitions including the Art Institute of Chicago, Artists’ Guild of Chicago, Cosmopolitan Art Club, Society of Western Artists, Municipal Art League, and even for national exhibitions like the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ annual exhibition.[73]

As the 1890s closed and a new century beckoned, Browne’s stability within the core group of Chicago artists strengthened. He continued his interest in the creation of a supportive, intelligent, democratic and cohesive art community in Chicago. In 1897, he participated in the formation of the Chicago Art Association (known after 1900 as the Municipal Art League). The organization was created through the merging of the various arts organizations in Chicago, by one account numbering thirty-four, in an attempt to consolidate the support of local artists. As Browne wrote:

“The unification of the various art interests with the women’s and other clubs into a concerted movement, focussing in the exhibition of the work of Chicago artists…was the most important step toward progress that our local art has experienced….general taste must be improved, and it can best be developed through judicious exercise of taste. The prize system places the choice largely in the hands of artists, while the purchasing idea would place the choice where it belongs—with the people who furnish the money and who are to be benefited by what is purchased….An artist paints to give pleasure to others, and his usefulness, ability, his power to create, are increased by knowing that his work is being scattered and admired.”[74]

The ideas and associations that had the flush of youthful enthusiasm and esprit de corps in the actions of the Central Art Association were continued with the force, political pull, and critical push of a mature leader in the Chicago art world.[75]

Browne’s influence had also solidified when was hired to teach at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1895, a position he held until 1910. His assignments covered a wide range of courses from antique, artistic anatomy, history of art, drawing and painting still life and from life, composition, and mural decoration, though he most regularly taught anatomy and lectured on art history.[76] Browne entered school life with the same leadership and enthusiasm seen in his other artistic activities. By all indications, ‘Browne the teacher’ held very clear ideas about the rigors of artistic learning and his adherence to them, at least in life drawing, gained notoriety among the students. One writer recorded that:

“Mr. Browne has been given the title ‘Dark Browne’ by some facetious pupils, from his insistence, in and out of season, of the importance of light and shade as a vital means of expression in drawing, and in his classes from life he has advocated the employment of a background so that the figure might be studied in tone and in its environment or surrounding. This had been his panacea and aid to connect the work of the outline draughtsman with the painting classes. His ardor for these theories has awakened considerable enthusiasm among his pupils and not a little criticism from the ‘outlinists’.”[77]

That Browne was not above the enthusiasm of student life and was a favored teacher despite, or because of, his rigor is indicated in the students’ burlesque of him. The event of the year for the art students was a costume parade that burlesqued the school and its teachers. Browne was highlighted in the 1901 parade when his anatomy class had one of their female students dresses in a beard and white linen work suit pulling along a skeleton.[78] Some years later he was called “one of the best beloved” teachers.[79] Browne also offered his summers to the extra-curricular activities of his students. He taught in 1901 at Macatawa Bay, Michigan, with University of Illinois professor Frank Forrest Frederick;[80] held his own summer classes for three summers from 1907-09 at Grand Detour, Illinois;[81] and one in 1912 at Wilmot, Wisconsin.[82]

Though his painting style was to change by 1904, the works from this earlier period were praised especially for their refined effects and depictions of clouds. For instance, a reviewer of a work in 1900 expressed:

“There is a man in the city who paints without any efforts after astonishing combinations….his painting tells the story in plain language….he shows knowledge and true feeling for juxtaposition of lines….the artist’s management of the honest blue sky and those big cumulous clouds is very satisfying…to tell the simple story of a summer’s day, of its light and glow, of its commonplace colors and effects, and to tell them convincingly and still charmingly, means a chosen selection of good words, just right words, words softly spoken. So this artist talks in select brushstrokes, every one plainly uttered, every one tender but firm, visible, fitting its neighbor stroke. It is not easy to do, this summer landscape, without any extravagant gestures or straining after smartness.”[83]

Such works garnered attention locally and nationally. While Browne showed heavily in local Chicago exhibitions, his work was also accepted in the annual exhibitions of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the National Academy of Design, the Society of Western Artists, and the Carnegie Institute International. Browne’s work was also accepted into the major expositions of the period, including the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893; Trans-Mississippi & International Universal in 1898; Paris Universal Exposition in 1900; Pan-American Exposition in 1901; St. Louis Universal Exposition in 1904; Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in 1905, and Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915.[84]

Falling back on his own student training, Browne was also a leader in the development of Institute curricula. In 1906 he and fellow instructor Thomas Wood Stevens (1880-1942) oversaw the completion of ten murals depicting old English sports in the Institute refectory.[85] The following year mural painting, along with decorative line composition and etching, was added to the curriculum.[86] The first class, again under the direction of Browne and Wood, completed three large murals for the auditorium of the Elm Place Grammar School.[87]

Browne carried his student lecturing to a much wider art public. In fact, between what is most likely his first Chicago lecture as part of his activities with the Central Art Association in 1894, to the end of his career, Browne gave hundreds of lectures to groups including high schools, women’s clubs, cultural clubs, art students, exhibition openings and at the Art Institute lecture series.[88] His topics were equally varied, ranging from Italian art, Scottish art, landscape painting, history of American art, the Art Institute as a democratic center, his various international trips, to lectures on actual works in the Art Institute galleries. In fact, Browne was so involved in teaching and lecturing during this time that it was noted by critics. In 1902[89], when Browne exhibited a large group of his works at O’Brien’s, a popular commercial art gallery, the Chicago Evening Post critic lamented, “For the first time in many years Charles Francis Browne exhibits a collection of his paintings. From time to time one or two landscapes have appeared, leading the art-loving public to hope that he had found leisure in his busy days of teaching and lecturing to devote a few hours to the development of an undeniable talent for landscape painting.”[90]

After the close of the school term in 1903 Browne left for an extended European visit, not having been back since his student days. Though he spent some time in France, the majority of his stay was spent in southwest Scotland, painting en plein-air with artists known as the Glasgow School, even showing one of his works in the Glasgow Exhibition.[91] Upon his return he had a solo exhibition of sixty-six works at the Art Institute of Chicago to much critical acclaim about the change this trip had wrought in his style.[92] Field and Sky (location unknown), his entry in the 1905 Art Institute of Chicago American annual, won the Martin B. Cahn prize for best painting by a Chicago artist, where it was noted the work, along with Robert Henri’s (1865-1929) prize winning painting, A Lady in Black “easily led in popularity[93] One critic noted his stylistic change with the prize winning piece:

“The canvas of summer fields over-shadowed by floating clouds was a new departure for Mr. Browne. He has painted with a careful brush, and made many canvases agreeable in composition and color, but none before that had such special distinction. It was painted largely with the palette-knife, and, in a way, was a reminder of the skies of Maris or kindred Dutch painters, who catch the blue of upper air, the moist of the gray mist, and the billowy whiteness of cloud masses under the summer sun.[94]

Likewise, the reviewer for the Chicago Record-Herald noted the change in Browne’s work, reporting, “In this landscape Field and Sky Mr. Browne shows a radical departure from his former method. Going into broad impressionism at a bound as he does, he surprises his admirers, and pleasantly. The coloring in the prize winner is all in blues and drabs and the paint…is put on in clots and ridges after the most advanced impressionistic manner.”[95]

Though the reviews of Browne’s work suggest a sudden relinquishing of his conservative posture, by 1904 the Glasgow School had become an accepted sub-group of the general trend toward naturalism begun by the Barbizon painters and pushed to extreme by the Impressionists. The school espoused a direct approach to painting landscapes through en plein-air painting; simplified palettes and compositions of the Tonalists; loose, wide brushstrokes that created a more active surface; and a moody, poetic atmosphere created by cool tones and grays.[96] Certainly Browne’s oeuvre had expanded with his time away as mentioned by an art critic who said, “During his year abroad Mr. Browne has enlarged his scope very perceptibly and has developed in accordance.”[97]

Indeed, Browne’s new paintings of 1904 reflect this approach. In 1906, Browne’s change of style received an extended discussion by James Pattison in the Sketch Book. Pattison noted:

“Now Charles Francis Browne has declared his independence and gone over to the lovable line of rebels. I presume that he still lugs that package of ‘traps’ out to the frosty meadows, but there is a different attitude now in his worship. He has ceased to ‘grovel’ before the god of Truth…in ‘Field and Sky’…there is no troublesome array of useless weeds, bushes or other rubbish. It is a servant to a more worthy master, the hill in the air…no effort at elaborating trees, though we know well that a little forest blankets the slopes. All this is but a servant to the immensity of the sky, the soaring place for birds and clouds, the refuge of summer light, the bigness of aerial space….Browne used to pay much attention to truths of color, the color of an autumnal tree, of one green tree against another green one, of the color of summer grass or winter dryness. Here he tells us only of tones, plays with two or three trifles of harmony….Does anything so proclaim the arrived master as the ability to suggest great things with select and slightly differential tones, tones and no definite local color?”[98]

With the stylistic change came extraordinary success as in 1906 he garnered the Young Fortnightly Club Prize,[99] Municipal Art League Prize for Group of Pictures,[100] Mrs. William Frederick Grower Prize, at the annual exhibit of Chicago artists at the Art Institute and the important Fine Arts Building Prize at the Society of Western Artists annual.[101]

Upon his return from abroad at the end of 1908 it became evident Browne’s style had further developed in an impressionistic, tonalist direction after a 1908 sojourn to France, especially in terms of creating a mood through an even greater simplification of his palette and compositions.[102] His entries in the Society of Western Artists annual for the 1908/09 season upon arriving in Chicago were once again awarded the Fine Arts Building Prize.[103] Five months later he followed this success with an exhibition at the Fine Arts Building in 1909, which received notice of continued development:

“This group of pictures has a completeness denied earlier works. The paintings winning the prize of the Western Artists approached it,[104] but these play on another theme….They are distinguished by simplicity…these harmonies of color above river, hills, the sky and the vegetation call for echoes in the mind, they have harmonies of their own translated form the emotion produced by the landscape under its mood….the strength…is to be found in the decision, the personal note, and the free exercise of artistic power to grasp a mood. The exhibition is one of the memorable ones of the year.”[105]

The same year Browne was divorced from his wife. The cause of separation was reportedly due to a difference in “temperament.” However, it seems Tubby, as she was affectionately known was in the hunt for more income than her husband could provide.[106] The marital stir caused some commotion in Chicago society as the Brownes were noted close friends of the wealthiest of artists in town, those with closest ties to the social elite.[107]

Browne’s inherent artistic conservatism, as well as his well-established leadership in the Chicago art community, is given full expression in his response to the International Exhibition of Modern Art, better known as the “Armory Show” that traveled from its venue in New York City to the Art Institute in 1913. As one of the most popular art lecturers both to the Chicago public and to its students, as well as the current president of the Society for Western Artists, Browne’s dismissal and castigation of the Modern artwork was widely quoted and respected. On March 25th, one day after the exhibition opened to the public, Browne spoke to a full house at Fullerton Hall in the Art Institute where he questioned the sincerity of the artists, asking “In this movement how many are leaders and how many merely camp followers?”[108] He characterized the works as a “toss-up between madness and humbug,” and focussed on van Gogh’s insanity, the immorality of Gauguin’s life in Tahiti, and Matisse’s supposed assertions that his child’s paintings were masterpieces. Two days later he spoke at a ball held to spoof the cubist works where works were mocked in life through costume and music, all with a harsh sarcastic tone.[109] As an Art Institute instructor, Browne was in a powerful position when he encouraged his students to dismiss the exhibition.[110]

Several art organizations publicly ridiculed the exhibition as well. Two days after the exhibition opening the Chicago Society of Artists sponsored a “Futurist Party” at the Art Institute in which the attendees behaved and dressed as bizarrely as they could imagine in order to “stage a hilarious parody of works by artists who seemed so entirely beyond the pale as to be utterly ridiculous.”[111] The Cliff Dwellers, another local artist group to which Browne belonged, also took on the exhibition in their own way by hanging satires of the modern works in their clubrooms atop the Orchestra Hall Building. “Earl Howell Reed (1863-1931), who with Charles Francis Browne and Louis Betts (1873-1961) constitute the art committee of the Cliff Dwellers, started the ball rolling by dashing off sixteen cubist works in a couple of hours. A.M. Rebort did a cubist impression of the head of Hamlin Garland in less than twenty minutes…. Taft with a picture of ‘A Nude Eating Soup With a Fork,’ done in sixty strokes….It is all one mad riot of color and composition.”[112]

Browne himself admitted that such non-traditional modes of art would never make sense to him. In one of his public lectures on the exhibition he stated that, “I talked all night with a cubist in Paris. He called me a blackguard; I called him another. That’s as much as either of us got out of the chat.”[113] However, Browne’s entrenchment in traditional painting never allowed him to even consider that such works had any validity or that their challenge to traditional painting might be as fundamental as they indeed were. In another of his lectures, Browne assured his audience and maybe himself as well, that “time will have its way with the cubists, and it will not be long until they are only a memory.”[114]

Browne’s activity as an ‘official voice’ of the art world grew to a national voice in 1913 when he was appointed superintendent for the U.S. Section of the Department of Fine Arts in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.[115] He had, in part, been readied for the selection by his 1910 appointment as the Assistant U.S. Commissioner for the International Exposition in Buenos Aires and Santiago, Chile.[116] Browne left for France in late July 1913 to inform American artists working in France of the committee and process for selection. He spent the summer, however, to his own benefit, sketching in the French countryside near Les Andelys with another rather tonalist artist, Alexis Jean Fournier (1865-1948).[117] The results of this trip were shown at the Artists’ Guild galleries in Chicago’s Fine Arts Building. Included were five scenes of Chateau Gaillard rising above the river, which showed a “sense of drama in nature’s contrasts of color.”[118]

Browne’s typical democratic ideals, seen from his early work with the Central Art Association and strengthened in his lobbying for the Chicago Art Association held sway with his selection of works on a national level. A reporter for the Chicago Evening Post wrote, “It is interesting…to consider the stand taken by Charles Francis Browne in regard to the exhibition of American paintings at the San Francisco exhibition. Mr. Browne is sturdily opposed to the greediness of individuals who would take whole walls and galleries. ‘No man has a right to space for a dozen pictures, while he may be keeping eleven others out of the gallery…. Let us be fair to our painters, give the modest man who has neither friends nor influence a chance and limit the big men to two exhibits at the most. In that way we can secure a genuinely representative exhibition of American painters.’”[119]

It was on the strength of his international art activities that in some circles he was considered a replacement for the recently deceased director of the Art Institute, William M. R. French. While his name was mentioned, most likely among art circles, the directors and wealthy patrons of the museum would no doubt have other thoughts, so it never came to pass.[120]

Browne’s personal life suffered a deep tragedy in August of 1916 when his son, Charlie, Jr., broke his neck while diving off a pier at Palisades Park, near South Haven, Michigan. After Browne’s divorce from his wife, Charlie lived with Annie and Seymour Nelson, members of the Glenview New Church society. Charlie was with the Nelson’s at their summer cottage in Michigan when the accident happened.[121] He was immediately paralyzed from the waist down. He was taken by boat to Chicago’s Washington Park hospital where he underwent an operation for the removal of a fractured vertebra. He was not expected to recover, and he died the evening of the operation, August 6, 1916, at the age of seventeen.[122] Browne took consolation in his faith and his connections to the New Church, particularly with those old friends from Bryn Athyn, became even closer in the following years.[123]

In 1918 Browne was awarded the most prestigious of all prizes for Chicago artists, the Silver Medal of the Chicago Society of Artists awarded for the most meritorious group of paintings at the annual show of Chicago artists at the Art Institute.[124] Later that year he traveled to Santa Barbara for an extended stay with Hobart C. Chatfield-Taylor, formerly of Chicago.[125] In early May of 1919 Browne suffered a stroke that left him bed-ridden for over a month. Though he returned to Eagle’s Nest that July intending to spend the remaining summer there, he was still too ill to work and was admitted to the Henrotin hospital. After nearly a month of recovery in the hospital, he was taken to reside with the Nelson’s in Glenview.[126]

The clearest and most telling evidence of Browne’s position in the Chicago art world, as well as the personal respect his ideals had garnered, was shown in the response of the art world to his difficulties. Headed up by Ralph Clarkson, and officially overseen by the Governor and Mrs. Frank O. Lowden, a tribute exhibition of twenty-five canvases opened at the Art Institute on December 16, 1919, in order to raise funds to help support the ailing artist.[127] Over forty names in the Chicago art world served on the committee and nearly every major art organization held receptions at the exhibition, including the Cliff Dwellers, Cordon Club, Arts Club, Municipal Art League, Friends of American Art, Chicago Society of Artists, Arché Club, Little Room, and Chicago Woman’s Club. Purchases from the exhibition raised $12,000.[128]

Most telling are the tributes printed in nearly every Chicago paper. After an extended tribute to Browne’s citizenship, Marguerite Williams of the Chicago Daily News continued: “Mr. Browne’s exhibition of quiet landscape might easily be overlooked by the casual visitor to the Art Institute. Though they do not shout to the throngs because of their size, technique or subject, they are none the less full of sincerity, refinement and a certain amount of poetic feeling.” She then quoted Lorado Taft’s tribute from the exhibition’s catalogue: “the land and sky that one desires to remember are Mr. Browne’s engrossing theme. His pictures are livable companions. Unlike many, they do not wear out and speedily reveal their emptiness.”[129] Equally, critic Lena M. McCauley championed Browne’s leadership in the development of the art world in Chicago, stating: “he was the pioneer in calling attention to the beauty of the winding Rock River….It is pleasant to review years of advance in any profession, yet far more wonderful is it to be able to live with a growing city, to watch it develop in its pride and to take note of those things of the spirit that make for the nobler side of life.”[130]

Even before the benefit exhibition, Browne had spoken to his friends at Bryn Athyn about moving back East when he had recovered. He discussed possibly reworking the curriculum of the Academy art department with his old friend N. Dandridge Pendleton and to Enoch Price he had written, “I am nourishing an idea which I must thoroughly examine of making my home in Bryn Athyn.”[131] Browne did move back to live with his mother and brother, Roger, in Waltham in the winter of 1920. He died at his mother’s home on March 20, 1920, as a result of another stroke.[132] Browne left the residue of his estate, about $14,000 plus over sixty paintings, to the Academy, which used the monies as a fund for scholarships in honor of his devotion to New Church education.[133] The Congress Hotel in Chicago purchased the remainder of the paintings in his estate as use for decorating their hotel rooms.[134]

Browne moved to Chicago at a time when artists felt as passionate about the promise of the city as an art center as they did about creating their own art. Browne’s career, in essence, paralleled that of the art community in Chicago. He was untiring in his work towards the realization of an art community that had a sense of its own identity. He dedicated his time to educating the Midwestern public towards a greater understanding and patronage of local art. Lastly, he created a body of landscapes characterized, if by their conservative nature, then also by their directness and honesty in recording the artist’s responses to nature.

Lorado Taft provided a moving tribute to Browne at close of a fine life and career:

“No one among us has contributed more abundantly of his time to the service of the community… All of this activity combined with earnest, unremitting and valuable aid… would seem to be enough for one man. But… Mr. Browne, the citizen, has ever been first and foremost an artist. Never have we known a man more in love with nature… When one thinks of the joy that he has been able to record and to carry over to other hearts… it seems as though the most enviable of all estates is to be a landscape painter – a landscape painter like Charles Francis Browne!”[135]

[1]William Vernon, “Landscapes By Charles Browne Are Now On View: Product of Months of Work at Eagle’s Nest on the Rock River, Is Placed on Exhibition at O’Brien’s,” Chicago American, 11/23/1902, p.3.

[2]Eleanor Jewett, “New Exhibits on at Art Institute and Arts Club,” Chicago Tribune, 12/21/1919, Part 8, p.6. Browne was lauded for seeking out local landscapes proving the artist need not necessarily travel far from home to find ample subject matter. Lena McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 6/13/1903, p.14.

[3]“Last of Her Generation,” Waltham Daily Free Press Tribune, 11/10/1920. Emmeline’s family had lived in Harvard, Massachusetts, since the colonial era. The family lived at 46 Prospect Street, where she stayed until her death.

[4]James William Pattison, “The Art of Charles Francis Browne,” Sketch Book, Vol. 5, No. 5, January 1906, pp.199-207.

[5]Browne became so accomplished in the very area that had proved an obstacle in his earlier training that he served as a demonstrator of anatomy. “Personal,” The Round Table, Beloit College, 11/29/1893, p.68. Furthermore, Browne later became the anatomy instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago—proof again of his desire to attain the skills believed necessary to be successful in his artistic field. A copy of Browne’s anatomy exam from December 18, 1900, is held in Browne’s file at the Ryerson Library, Art Institute of Chicago.

[6]Enoch S. Price, “Charles Francis Browne,” New Church Life, August 1920, pp.472-76.

[7]Enoch S. Price, “Charles Francis Browne,” New Church Life, August 1920, pp.472-76.

[8]Jayne Cronlund, “Charles Francis Browne,” Glencairn Museum Newsletter, August 1988. In fact, Browne asked the Headmaster at the Academy School, Mr. Schreck, to write him a letter of recommendation for the position at Beloit College. See Letter to Schreck from Browne, Rockport, Cape Ann, 10/9/1893, BAA.

[9]Op. cit., Price, New Church Life, 1920, pp.472-76.

[10]Browne spent time throughout his career at Rockport as his family owned a cottage there. James William Pattison dates sketching with Thayer in 1886. Op. cit., Pattison, The Sketch Book, 1906, p.205. A letter from Browne to Enoch Price, Rockport, Massachusetts, 6/7/1886, New Church archives, Bryn Athyn, PA (hereafter BAA); states: “Will go fishing tomorrow to get material for a seashore banquet in honor of Abbot Thayer the New York painter who is coming down to prospect the place. He will probably live here next season.” In a letter dated 11/26/1887 Browne said he would sail for Antwerp on Saturday (12/3/1887). He also mentions more than once his allowance, the first in a letter to Price 6/3130/1889, BAA.

[11]Catherine Fehrer, The Julian Academy Paris 1868-1939, (New York: Shepherd Gallery, Spring 1989), not paginated.

[12]Letter to Reverend Enoch S. Price, from 24 Rue de Buci, Paris, 1888, BAA.

[13]For his placement, see op. cit., Pattison, The Sketch Book, 1906, p.205. There are some biographical sources that state Browne studied with Gustave Clarence Rodolphe Boulanger (1824-1888), however little account of this can be found other than a letter from 6/25/1888 to Reverend Price that mentions in passing Boulanger criticized while Gérôme was in Spain. In his curriculum vitae for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, it seems he may have stretched the two weeks somewhat by noting Boulanger as one of his “masters,” a not unusual attribution for an American seeking some credibility in a foreign country. Annette Blaugrund, Paris 1889: American Artists at the Universal Exposition, (Philadelphia: Academy of Fine Arts with Harry N. Abrams, 1989), p.271.

[14]Letter to Enoch Price from Browne, Écouen-Seiur et Oise, France, 7/28/1888 and 8/8/1888, BAA. See also B. Bennett, “Western Artists,” The Sketch Book, Vol. 2, No. 6, July 1903, p.39. Browne’s photograph appears on p.39.

[15]Exhibition of Paintings and Sketches by Charles Francis Browne, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 12/6/1904), forward.

[16]Though it is not certain which Summer, 1889 or 1890, that Browne conducted his own classes in Auvers, he was still in Paris in February of 1890, as evidenced by a letter to Rev. Price, 2/2/1890. Thus the following summer, with less to look forward to in Paris and another full year of study at the Ecole under his belt, seems a much more likely date. Op. cit., Pattison, The Sketch Book, 1906, pp.199-207.

[17]Letter dated 2/2/1890 from Browne to Rev. Price, BAA. Galland taught decorative design. That the work was practical is evidenced by Browne’s stating in the letter, “He gives us different schemes to carry out – ceilings – borders for frescoes – etc. and architectural ornament to sketch and study for composition... for the sake of getting good ideas on decoration—ideas for ornament construction, arrangements for this or that and am improving my taste and enlarging my stock of ideas considerably.”

[18]Letter dated 2/2/1890 from Browne to Rev. Price, BAA.

[19]As Browne stated, … I’m sure I can work it into my duties when I return to teach if I’m needed.” Letter to Enoch Price from Browne, Paris, 2/2/1890, BAA.

[20] See Browne to Price, Waltham, MA, 12/9/1891, BAA. Browne had been to New York earlier that week and had sold $250 worth of paintings.

[21]Letter to Enoch Price from Browne, 12/9/1891, BAA. Schreiber had also studied decoration under Galland and the two students had traveled through Italy during time off from their studies. See also op. cit., Pattison, The Sketch Book, 1906, pp.199-207, and Harriet Hayden Hayes, “Chicago Artists and Their Work,” The National Magazine, April 1897, pp.50-62. Browne and Schreiber shared a studio at 289 Wabash Ave. “Art and Artists,” The Graphic, 3/12/1892, p.192. The mural was later purchased by the Armour Institute for their new building.

[22]John E. Findling, editor, Historical Dictionary of World’s Fairs and Expositions, 1851—1988, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press), p.130. For a personal response, see Ada Bartlett Taft, Lorado Taft: Sculptor and Citizen, (Greensboro, NC: 1946), p.20. Taft declared the experience of working on the exposition was parallel to working on the Parthenon.

[23]As the sculptor Richard W. Bock remembered, “a panel of the Seal of Costa Rica, for which I engaged the well-known painter Charles Francis Browne. At this time he was stranded in Chicago and I helped him for quite some time, so when he left for New York he had money in his pocket and his debts were paid.” Dorathi Bock Pierre, editor, Memoirs of an American Artist: Sculptor Richard W. Bock, (Los Angeles: CC Publishing, 1991), p.48. Browne was back in the East by September 1893. By mid-October he was headed back to Chicago. Letter to Schreck from Browne, Waltham, MA, 10/6/1893, BAA.

[24]“Faculty and Trustees,” The Round Table, Beloit College, 11/29/1893, p.68.

[25]“Art Department,” The Round Table, Beloit College, 10/3/1894, p.25: “The financial panic of ’93 and ’94 touched Beloit so severely that the revenues of the Art Department were curtailed… It is to be hoped before very long that the courses in Art may be made elective as in many of the eastern colleges… Prof. Browne is very eager to make his department a success.”

[26]Letter to Enoch Price from Browne, Chicago, 10/15/1894, BAA. Browne also stated in this letter, “My progress in art has been very slow here….”

[27]Browne’s church activities ran concurrently with his artistic activities throughout his career. In fact, N. Dandridge Pendleton presided over Browne’s marriage ceremony. The artist did several times consider how his faith might affect his painting and felt that what he believed would determine, in an implicit manner, his painting. Letter to Schreck from Browne, Waltham, 10/6/1893, BAA: “I have felt that if a New Churchman lives a life according to the light of the writings it would enlighten his acts and an artist’s work would reflect the character, his spirit if he honestly did his work. Dealing as I do in my work with the externals of nature I feel that the only New Church I can put in it must flow into the treatment through an honest New Church conception of the subject painted. A New Church artist can never have a gross, materialistic, impressional sic conception of nature. It reflects or suggests some mental attribute and the picture should awaken a similar state in the spectator.” Also, more concisely later in his life, see Letter to Katharine Benade from Browne, Chicago, 2/11/1916, BAA: “for one’s work is one’s life.” For a consideration of the influence of Swedenborgian beliefs on the most famous American Swedenborgian painter, see Eugene Taylor, “The Interior Landscape: George Inness and William James on Art from a Swedenborgian Point of View,” Archives of American Art Journal, Vol. 37, Nos. 1&2, 1997, pp.2-10. Stated here, specific to art, “According to doctrine, spirit remains hidden in nature to the unenlightened eye…an internal vision of the spirit on the part of the artist is used to try to reveal the beauty of the natural in the eye of the viewer….Swedenborg states: ‘Nothing is to be found in the created universe which has not a correspondence with something in man, not only with his affections and their thoughts, but also with his bodily organs and viscera; not with these, however, as substances, but as uses.’” Browne was in contact with another Swedenborgian painter in Illinois, Henry Wilson Barnitz (1864-1916). See The Barnitz Triad, (Springfield, OH: Springfield Art Center, 1978), p.10.

[28]Letter to Enoch Price from Browne, Chicago, 10/15/1894, BAA: “We are going to have an art class at the Glen this winter—probably on Tues. Eve.

[29]As a later tribute to Browne from 1919 stated, “To anyone who has followed the development of Chicago for a period of years, the names of four men stand out above all others for the part they have played in her art history. These four names are Taft, Clarkson, Grover, and Charles Francis Browne. These men were pioneers in building the art life of Chicago, and the city owes much to their faith, forethought, brotherly spirit and constructive citizenship… they have encouraged students, appreciated and called attention to the work of other artists, and aroused the public to an effective interest in art matters while at the same time they have been producing important work of their own.” Lucy Fitch Perkins, “Browne’s Pictures Attract Attention,” Evanston News Index, 12/16/1919.

[30]“The Fine Arts,” Chicago Tribune, 5/8/1892, p.44, and “Where Art Thrives,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, 1/28/1894, p.25.

[31]As part of his duties with the prestigious Society, he was named president of the Chicago committee on fundraising for artist Ralph Blakelock (1847-1919) and his wife who were destitute. The committee held art sales and took in donations to help support them. Louise James Bargelt, “Art,” Chicago Tribune, 5/16/1916, p.16.

[32]As early as 1895, on Chicago lecturer noted: “Charles Francis Browne is the first water-color artist of Chicago…” Mary Ford, quoted in The Round Table, Beloit College, Vol. XLI, No.13, 4/10/1895, p.191.

[33]A complete set of Society of Western Artists exhibitions catalogues is in the Ryerson Library, Art Institute of Chicago.

[34]Maude I. G. Oliver, “Gossip Of The Artists,” Chicago Record-Herald, 6/2/1912, sec. 5, p.4. Oliver announces his election for the coming year. The Arts Club grew out of the Artists’ Guild.

[35]Current research is from the Illinois Historical Art Project, who provide the information for this footnote. The origination is incorrectly placed in 1893 by Anna Morgan, My Chicago, (Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1918), pp.188-193. Bernard Duffey, in “The Genteel Protest,” The Chicago Renaissance in American Letters, (E. Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1954), pp.51-57, allows that it may have begun as early as 1892, or as late as 1896. The informal club grew from the Attic Club, founded in January 1895, which was comprised of writers, critics, architects and artists, and met regularly in the studio of Lorado Taft in the Athenaeum building. See: Lucy Monroe, “Chicago Letter,” Critic, Vol. 23, 2/9/1895, p.112. Wynne’s The Little Room and Other Stories was not published until 1895 (Chicago: Way & Williams). The room in her story was a special place where only a chosen few could see in to know it existed and others were oblivious to the room before their very eyes. Harriet Monroe also credited the name of the club to Wynne’s book in A Poet’s Life. Seventy Years in a Changing World, (New York: MacMillan Company, 1938), p.197. Monroe describes the guests, “... and every visitor to Chicago who was anybody in any of the arts would be brought to the Little Room by some local confrère.” Probably the best, most accurate and most contemporaneous to the events account was provided by Hamlin Garland: “It soon became my habit to spend an hour or two in Taft’s studio… Taft’s studios became, naturally, our center of aesthetic exchange… A group of us often lunched in what Taft called ‘the beanery’ – a noisy, sloppy little restaurant on Van Buren Street… This ‘artistic gang’ also contained several writers… For a year or two we met in Bessie Potter’s Vonnoh studio, and on the theory that our club, visible and hospitable only on Friday afternoon, was nonexistent all the other days of the week, we called it The Little Room. Later still we shifted to Ralph Clarkson’s studio in the Fine Arts Building – where it still flourishes.” Hamlin Garland, A Daughter of the Middle Border, (New York: MacMillan & Co., 1923), pp.4, 5. Harriet Hayden Hayes in “Chicago Artists and Their Work,” The National Magazine, April 1897, pp.50-62; incorrectly stated they met every Tuesday.

[36]Bernard Duffey, “The Genteel Protest,” The Chicago Renaissance in American Letters, (Michigan State College Press, 1954), pp.51-57.

[37]Russell Lynes, The Taste-Makers, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954), pp.150-59. Browne was clearly a true believer in such democratic thought. Later, as an instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago, Browne was interviewed regarding his opinions on the instruction at the school. Browne was asked by a Mr. Aldis, “I heard someone say that they thought the trouble with this school was that we advertised it too much…if it was advertised in only a few good periodicals, etc., it would bring out the better quality.” To which Browne replied, “I should hate to feel that some glorious painter in Kansas lost his chance because he did not see the ad…. The whole theory of the education of France is the hope of finding one. No effort is wasted and no possibility of regret that one did not have the chance. I feel that that is magnificent.” Op. cit., Tuttle, “Minutes…,” 5/11/1916, p.75. The Association also sponsored an Artists’ Festival with the Art Institute in which Taft oversaw the Greeks, as Phidias, and Browne oversaw the Roman Renaissance, as Pope Julius II; though certainly an event of enjoyment, true to the high mission of the Association the intention was to “inaugurate them throughout the country, so that the study of art history may become one of vital importance as a means of art expression.” Arts for America, “Artists’ Festival,” Vol. 6, No.7, Central Art Association, March 1897, p.214.

[38]Op. cit., Ada Bartlett Taft, Lorado Taft…, 1946, p.19.

[39]A Critical Triumvirate, Impressions on Impressionism: Being a Discussion of the American Art Exhibition at the Art Institute, Chicago, (Chicago: Printed for The Central Art Association, Autumn 1894).

[40]“About The Studios: Reception Held by the Cosmopolitan Society of Artists,” Sunday Inter Ocean, Vol. XXII, No. 357, 3/18/1894, Part 3, p.27.

[41]Op. cit., A Critical Triumvirate, 1894, p.24.

[42]Op. cit., A Critical Triumvirate, 1894, p.17.

[43]Op. cit., A Critical Triumvirate, 1894, p.24.

[44]Op. cit., A Critical Triumvirate, 1894, p.23. Hamlin Garland and Browne expressed this exact same sentiment nearly verbatim in other publications. Garland in “Art Conditions in Chicago,” Cosmopolitan Art Club Annual Exhibition, (Chicago: Cosmopolitan Club, 1/12/1895): “There must be keen sensitiveness to the beautiful and significant in near-by things. The Chicago artist being denied certain picturesque aspects of seashore and mountain-side has a rare chance, to develop unhackneyed themes in sky and plain, and in the life of the city itself. The light floods the Kankakee marshes as well as the meadows and willows of Giverny… there are indications that the artists of the west are coming to this stage of spontaneous original effort. Already studies of Chicago streets, of Indiana meadows and streams, of Utah harvest fields, or the Indians of the prairies, of Lake Michigan villages… It must be admitted that the artist’s dark discouragement comes in the attempt to sell his work, for he meets at once with an almost insurmountable prejudice on the part of picture buyers…spontaneous choice, I repeat, will lead to…an American art, distinct and creative.” Likewise, Browne repeats the triumvirate mantra in “Chicago 1897,” Arts for America, Central Art Association, January 1898, p.302: “Chicago is woefully behind in matters of art. Newness, undevelopment, are no excuse. The fact remains that the people of taste and wealth do nothing for local stimulation, but expend, and often waste, time and money in ‘art’ objects simply because they have a foreign label. Judicious encouragement of the art now produced in Chicago by a band of martyrs to the cause of culture and refinement, would show immediate results.” Browne reiterated this idea throughout his career. For instance, in “Artists Talk at Institute,” Chicago American, 1/30/1903, Vol. 3, No. 211, p.12 it was noted in a lecture titled “The Landscape” for the opening of the Annual Exhibition of Chicago Artists, “Mr. Browne impressed upon his hearers in a forceful manner the supreme necessity for development of a hunger for beauty in such ordinary landscapes as daily present themselves to the average individual.”

[45]“Back to the Studios” Chicago Tribune, 11/4/1894, col. 5, p.25.

[46]Catalogue of the Seventh Annual Exhibition of Oil Paintings and Sculpture by American Artists, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 10/29/1894).

[47]“At The Art Palace,” Sunday Inter Ocean, Vol. XXIII, No. 204, 10/14/1894, Part 4, p.31.

[48]For Browne’s account of the trip, see Charles Francis Browne, “Elbridge Ayer Burbank,” Brush and Pencil, October 1898, pp.30-33. The travelers returned with not only curios, but stories as well. Browne was, as were most Eastern tourists, entranced by the Hopi Snake Dance he witnessed at Walpi, describing it as, “without doubt the strangest, most weird and perhaps most ancient ceremonial dance-drama in all our American domain.”

[49]The Arts, Vol. 4, No. 5 November 1895, p.152: “The rooms are fitted up with Indian trappings gathered during their sojourn in New Mexico and Arizona, and looks more like ‘Big Chief’s Wigwam’ than an artist’s retreat. If it were not for the excellent sculpture and painting, there would be but little to remind us that we were in the heart of a great city instead of the red man’s home.” Browne showed works from this trip periodically, though the most concentrated showing was at the Art Institute annual exhibition of that year, where he exhibited six Indian subjects. Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1895), p.16. Until this year, Browne’s studio had been located along Wabash Avenue.

[50]L. V. N., “ye – Art World,” Sunday Inter Ocean, 9/29/1895, p.31. The studio is further described by the same critic in “Echoes From the Studios,” Sunday Inter Ocean, 11/24/1895, p.35.

[51]“Chicago Artist Wins It,” Chicago Chronicle, 11/25/1895, in AIC Scrapbooks, Vol. 6, p.62. The two shared a studio in the Giles Building after the close of the World’s Columbian Exposition, which had drawn MacNeil to Chicago.

[52]Florence N. Levy, editor, American Art Annual 1900-1901, Vol. III, (Boston: Noyes, Platt & Company, 1900), part II, p.3.

[53]This is a typical composition and label of other late century Indian portraitists such as Joseph Henry Sharp (1859-1954), Bert Green Phillips (1868-1956) and Browne’s fellow Chicago painter, Elbridge Ayer Burbank (1858-1949).

[54]Unpublished biography on Charles Francis Browne by Spanierman Gallery, New York, 1996. Naiuchi held this important office until 1903, the year before his death. Cushing had his portrait painted by Thomas Eakins dressed as a member of the Bow Society. Browne is also typical in his choice of sitter as the majority of Native American portraits from this period are of male Indians whose identity had been made known to Anglo audience and the painter beforehand through either accounts of Indian wars, ethnologists, or tourist accounts. Female Indian portraits were mostly of young women chosen for their perceived beauty by Anglos.

[55]He traveled extensively to a variety of locales including: Auvers, France (1891); Cape Ann, MA (1890s); New Mexico and Arizona (1895); Maine (1895); Scotland (1903); Seine-et-Marne, France (1904); Giverny, France (1908-1909); South America (1910-1911); Les Andelys, France (1913), and Santa Barbara, CA (1919).

[56]“About The Studios,” Sunday Inter Ocean, Vol. XXIII, No. 127, 7/29/1894, Part 3, p.23. The artists camped on land owned by Charles Mulligan’s in-laws. For more information see, Timothy J. Garvey, “The Artist is Out: Recreations of the ‘Little Room’ and ‘Eagle’s Nest’,” Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society, November 1984, pp.59-67.

[57]The Arts, Vol. 4, No. 5, November 1895, p.152: “Bass Lake, Indiana, promises to become an Eldorado for Chicago artists…” The close personal ties among this core group of artists is indicated by the fact that Browne stood as Taft’s best man at his wedding. Arts for America, Vol. 5, No. 2, March 1896, p.70. Oliver Dennett Grover joined the group on the second year’s outing. “Art and Artists: Exhibitions next week,” Chicago Evening Post, 4/18/1896, p.10.

[58]Immediately after the first summer in 1894 he showed a landscape at the American annual show in the Art Institute. Op. cit., Seventh Annual Exhibition of Oil Paintings and Sculpture by American Artists, 10/29/1894).

[59]“Society of Western Artists,” Arts for America, Vol. 7, No. 7, March 1898, p.402. A picture of Browne appears on p.405.

[60]The work was illustrated in James S. Dickerson, “A Chicago Renaissance?,” Brush and Pencil, Vol. 1, No. 6, March 1898, p.189. Another nighttime work, Moonlight (deaccessioned, location unknown), was purchased by the Union League Club of Chicago from the 1900 annual exhibit of Chicago artists. “Exhibition Notes,” Brush and Pencil, Vol. 6, No. 1, April 1900, p.11.

[61]This charter initially required an annual rental fee of one dollar, a provision of two free lectures on the fine arts in Oregon and an agreement to pay all taxes. There are numerous sources on the Eagle’s Nest Art Colony. See for example, Athalae Elliot McGuire, “Eagle’s Nest Association, 1898-1942,” (M. S. thesis: Northern Illinois University, 1964); Herbert Spencer Fiske, “The Eagle’s Nest,” Brush and Pencil, Vol. 2, No. 6, September 1898, pp.271-75; Harriet Monroe, “Eagle’s Nest Camp,” House Beautiful, Vol. 16, No. 3, August, 1904, pp.5-10. Op. cit., Garvey, Transactions of the Illinois…, 1984, pp.59-67 and Josephine Craven Chandler, “Eagle’s Nest Camp, Barbizon of Chicago Artists,” Art and Archaeology, Vol. 12, No. 5, November 1921, pp.195-204.

[62]Op. cit., Ada Taft, Lorado Taft…, 1946, p.47.

[63]“Weddings and Engagements,” Chicago Times-Herald, 5/15/1898, part 2, p.22. The already previously married Turbia and Browne were married at The Immanuel Church, which was a New Church institution.

[64]“About The Studios: Oils and Water Colors of the Chicago Society of Artists,” Sunday Inter Ocean, 4/22/1894, Part 4, p.34.

[65]Lewis W. William II, Lorado Taft: American Sculptor and Art Missionary, (Ph. D. Dissertation: University of Chicago, 1958), p.73: “Sister Zulime, after studying art in France, returned and married Hamlin Garland. Sister Turbia married Charles Francis Browne. The group was, as reported by Garland, remarkably congenial socially and artistically. They even spent their summers together at Bass Lake, Indiana, for some years.”

[66]Befitting the air of camaraderie and communal agreement, above the fireplace in the clubhouse was a quote from Edward Lear’s “Four Little Children”: “And here all these interesting animals lived together in the most copious harmony, seldom if anywhere else in the world is such perfect and abject happiness to be found.” “Art Colony Perched on Rock River Hills Inspiration to Painters,” Rockford Sunday Republic, 7/13/1930, part 3, p.1.

[67]Op. cit., Garvey, Transactions of the…, 1984, pp.59-67; “Swimming, boating, hiking, and other outdoor activities were always common; group events included community building projects, camp theatricals and dances, and excursions to local attractions…and any or all of the group would at the slightest provocation abandon modern dress altogether in favor of the Greek robes salvaged after an 1897 Chicago Art Institute pageant.”

[68]Elliot McGuire, “Eagle’s Nest Association, 1898-1942,” (M. S. thesis: Northern Illinois University, 1964).

[69]The building was designed by architect Solon Beman and erected in 1885 with an addition and remodeling completed in 1898. Originally built for the Studebaker Company as a showroom, the 1898 construction converted it to use for artists.

[70]In 1898, he was one of the first to take a studio in the Building. “Art Notices,” Brush and Pencil, Vol. 1, No. 6, March 1898, p.9. Browne’s later studio and residence was located at 1543 East 57th Street in an old storefront left over from the Columbian Exposition of 1893 and later known as the Fifty-seventh street art colony. The history of the founding of the art colony there is recounted in Al Chase, “Stony Island’s Old Art Center Property Sold,” Chicago Tribune, 12/8/1946, p.SWA. That his studio in Fine Arts was now temporary due to a forthcoming trip abroad is noted in Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 5/9/1908, p.4. His permanent parting was noted again by McCauley in “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 7/3/1908, p.4. However, evidently he was back in his tenth floor studio upon return from Europe as noted in Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 5/29/1909, p.4.

[71]Anna Morgan, My Chicago, (Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1918), pp.188-93. As local artist and publisher Ralph Fletcher Seymour (1876-1966) described in Some Went This Way: A Forty Year Pilgrimage Among Artists, Bookmen and Printers, (Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1945), p.50: “The Fine Arts Building…was taken over after the World’s Fair by Mr. Charles C. Curtiss…musicians filled the lower floors, two or three theatres, book lover’s and literary clubs, rare book dealers, art dealers, dramatic and dancing schools….the top floor was reserved for painters.” The printing offices for The Dial, an artistic journal whose content and tenor were matched by the “Little Room,” were also located in the Fine Arts Building. The journal was edited by Francis Fisher Browne and the printing done by his brother. Though Charles and Francis were not related, nor was Charles ever involved in the production of the journal, an un-footnoted assertion that they were brothers is often cited. See: Lloyd C. Engelbrecht, The Association of Arts and Industries: Background and Origins of the Bauhaus Movement in Chicago, (Ph. D. Dissertation: University of Chicago, 1973), p.160. Clearly Seymour is not confused in Some Went This Way as he states on pp.54-55: “The Browne family, headed by Francis Fisher Browne, cut a considerable figure in the life of the Building. They published a bi-weekly literary magazine named ‘The Dial’ and established a very swanky bookstore, for which Frank Lloyd Wright designed the furnishings….Francis Fisher Browne was its editor; his brother and an assistant, Mr. Gillespie, set its pages….Upon the editor’s death the printer Browne and the assistant Gillespie moved the typesetting plant into the Athenaeum Building, across the alley, and kept setting type for books.” Though Seymour speaks at length about Charles Francis Browne in another section of this publication, he never indicates, and neither did Charles Francis Browne, any relationship between the two groups of the same name.

[72]“Among The Artists,” Sunday Inter Ocean, 8/28/1898, p.24. Op. cit., Exhibition of Paintings and Sketches by Charles…, 12/6/1904, forward.

[73]Peter Hastings Falk, editor, Art Institute of Chicago, The Annual Exhibition Record, (Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1990), p.34; Peter Hastings Falk, editor, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: The Annual Exhibition Record, Volume III, 1914-1968, (Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1989), p.48; Various Society of Western Artists catalogues, Ryerson Library, Art Institute of Chicago.

[74]Charles Francis Browne, “The New Art Movement,” Brush and Pencil, Vol. 1, No. 2, November 1897, pp.25-26. See also: Charles Francis Browne, “Chicago 1897,” Arts for America, Vol. 7, No. 5, January 1898, pp.301: “There is a movement now taking tangible shape which is very promising. It aims to unify the efforts of various club bodies into more concerted action, and is undoubtedly the most important artistic item in this year’s art chronicle. It is called the Chicago Art Association….Its aims are local…the purchase of pictures rather than prize giving seems to reflect the practical drift of this new influence.”

[75]The League concerned themselves with the beautification of Chicago as part of their core mission. Browne was also active in this role. See for example his discussion in “Plans Suggested For A Perfect Park: Brown sic and Shattuck Talk,” Chicago Tribune, 2/11/1900, p.8.

[76]Browne’s teaching records are located in the in the Ryerson Library Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

[77]Op. cit., Bennett, The Sketch Book, July 1903, p.40. Browne also enthusiastically endorsed a more rigorous training in the beginning basic courses at the Institute. F. Tuttle, “Minutes of the School Committee Meeting,” 5/11/1916, Ryerson Library Archives, Art Institute of Chicago, pp.71-76.

[78]“Posters Announcing Girls’ Life Class Frolic at Art Institute Tonight,” Chicago Tribune, 12/12/1901, p.3.

[79]Ralph Elmer Clarkson in op. cit., Jewett, Chicago Tribune, 12/21/1919, Part 8, p.6

[80]Art Institute of Chicago Scrapbooks, vol. 14, col. 3, p.51.

[81]Lena M. McCauley, “Art,” Chicago Evening Post, 6/8/1907, p.16, and Maude I. G. Oliver, “Artists Off on Summer Outings,” Chicago Record-Herald, 6/7/1908, Part 5, p.5, Maude I. G. Oliver, “In the Local Art Galleries,” Chicago Record-Herald, 6/20/1909, Part 6, p.6.

[82]“Gossip of the Artists,” Chicago Record-Herald, 6/9/1912, Part 2, p.7.

[83]James William Pattison, “Pattison’s Art Notes: Charles Francis Browne’s Landscape Sketched Near Oregon, Ill. – Canvases at the Art Institute,” Sunday Inter Ocean, 1/13/1900, p.44. Other reviewers of Browne’s pre-1904 works make similar statements. For instance, a reviewer noted the “glorious sky” of Browne’s work, Summer Afternoon in the 5th Annual Society of Western Artists exhibition. William Vernon, “Say Verestchagin Pictures are not Art,” Chicago American, 3/16/1902, p.13. states: “Mr. Browne is a painter of the utmost refinement; his pictures are quiet, restful, accurate descriptions of nature….Mr. Browne is without question one of the most accomplished of Western painters, and he is one of the most popular,” though the critic does bemoan the fact that no great landscape can be painted from nature at midday in midsummer, the time of many of Browne’s works. Other comments included, “The atmospheric effects and treatment of clouds are particularly delightful.”

[84]Browne showed Reflections, Bass Lake, Indiana at the Paris Exposition, illustrated in op. cit., Pattison, The Sketch Book, 1906, p.202.

[85]“Advertising and Art Notes,” The Sketch Book, Vol. 5, No. 10, August 1906, p.IV.

[86]“Opens New Fields for Workers in Art,” Chicago Evening Post, 9/7/1907, p.5.

[87]“Canvases Are Being Prepared in the Local Institute Under the Direction of Two Well-Known Chicago Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 5/15/1907 in AIC Scrapbooks, Vol. 23, p15. Browne had completed several murals himself in Chicago as discussed by Isabel McDougall, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 2/17/1900, p.8, where it was reported a series of murals would be completed for the Chicago National Bank counting room. The artist in charge was Frederick Winthrop Ramsdell (1865-1915) and under him were Ralph Elmer Clarkson, Oliver Dennett Grover, and Charles Francis Browne. It is mentioned in Chicago Record Herald, 6/11/1905, in AIC Scrapbooks, Vol. 21, p.39, Browne accepted a commission to complete murals for the Germania, a restaurant connected to the Germania Club. These murals are now at the Altenheim Nursing home in Forest Park, Illinois. Also see: Chicago Examiner, 1/18/1906 in AIC Scrapbooks, Vol. 21, p.133, where it is reported Browne participated in the murals for the Fine Arts Building along with seven other Chicago artists. Though the project began in 1901, they weren’t installed until 1906.

[88]Some examples include: Central Art Association lectures, “The Ancestry of Painting.” Reference: “Armour Institute Lectures,” The Arts, Vol. 3, No. 4, October 1894, p.130.; Lecture series, “Upon pictures, old and contemporary,” Art Institute of Chicago. Reference: “Lectures at the Art Institute,” Chicago Call, 10/3/1896, in Art Institute of Chicago Scrapbooks, vol. 8, p.6.; Lecture, “Art Student Life in Paris,” Baptist Young People’s Society, Evanston, Illinois. Reference: “News Notes From Evanston,” Chicago Evening Post, 9/25/1897, in Art Institute of Chicago Scrapbooks, vol. 9, p.10.; Lecture, Trans-Mississippi & International Exposition, Omaha, Art Congress. Reference: “Art And Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 9/24/1898 in Art Institute of Chicago Scrapbooks, vol. 10, p.33.; General Federation of Women’s Club biennial convention, Art Institute of Chicago. Reference: Bloomington Bulletin, 6/21/1914 in Art Institute of Chicago Scrapbooks, vol. 31.; “The History of Art,” Art Institute of Chicago. Reference: “Art Institute Notes,” Chicago Herald, 11/19/1915 in Art Institute of Chicago Scrapbooks, vol. 33; “American Paintings at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, 1915.” Reference: Chicago Evening Post, 2/17/1916 in Art Institute of Chicago Scrapbooks, vol. 33; “Modern Art.” Reference: Lena M. McCauley, “News Of The Art World,” supplement, Chicago Evening Post, 12/18/1917; “English Painting: Early to Turner.” Reference: Lena M. McCauley, “News Of The Art World,” supplement, Chicago Evening Post, 1/22/1918.

[89]William Vernon, “Landscapes By Charles Browne Are Now On View,” Chicago American, 11/22/1902, p.3. Browne showed about forty canvases. He had had one other earlier major show at O’Brien’s, his first, in 1899 where he showed twenty-six canvases of mainly local landscapes and a few Southwestern and Eastern scenes. Arts for America, Vol. 8, No. 6, April 1899, p.364: “This is the first complete collection of his works ever shown in Chicago, and it is interesting to note how the various moods of summer affect the ‘conservative’ painting.” See also: Isabel McDougall, “Art And Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 3/11/1899, p.8: “Few men understand the drawing of a landscape better than does Mr. Browne…construction…is never lacking in Mr. Browne’s thoughtful and refined work.”

[90]Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 11/22/1902, p.14.

[91]It is probably instructive for the reader to note Browne had ample opportunity for exposure to the “Glasgow School,” when an exhibit of their work was shown at the Art Instittute late in 1895. It must be thought likely the impact of that exhibit lingered with him a long time. It is possible he was struck by their solid individualism as a group. For a review of the exhibit see: “Oil, Water, And Pastel: Paintings of Glasgow School at The Art Institute,” Chicago Tribune, 11/19/1895, p.12. In Scotland and England, Browne visited Arran, an island on the west coast, during August and September; Kirkeudbright—where the early Glasgow School worked—in southwest Scotland from October to February; St. Monans on the Fife coast in July (1904). In France he worked in Montigny, Seine-et-Marne from March to May. Op. cit., Exhibition of Paintings and Sketches by Charles…, 12/6/1904, “Catalogue,” and “France.” The exhibition included thirty-one works from Scotland; twenty-six from France and nine from Eagle’s Nest. See also: Lena M. McCauley, “Art” Chicago Evening Post, 12/10/1904, p.11: “The Mill Pond at Tongland, Kirkeudbright…hung in the Glasgow Exhibition, and was much liked abroad.”

[92]Such commentary included Editorials section, Chicago American, 12/4/1904, p.5: “The artists, amateurs and art students are much more interested in the exhibition of Mr. Browne than they are in either the Art Crafts or the Western Artists exhibition. He has not had an exhibition since the one at O’Brien’s some years ago. He is personally popular and it seems likely that he will occupy the immediate center of the limelight of local art for the next three weeks.” See also: op. cit., McCuley, Chicago Evening Post, 12/10/1904, p.11: “The charm is alive in the collection of sixty-six paintings and sketches made by Charles Francis Browne….He has gone directly to nature and painted as it appealed to his personal point of view.”

[93]Lena M. McCauley, “Art Lovers are Pleased”, Chicago Evening Post, 10/21/1905, p.10.

[94]Ellis W. Chapin, “Eighteenth Annual Fine Art Exhibition In Chicago,” Brush and Pencil, Vol. 16, December 1905, pp.206-207.

[95]Chicago Record Herald, 10/22/1905, in AIC Scrapbooks, Vol. 21, p.93. In comparing his prize winning piece to works in the tenth annual exhibit by the Society of Western Artists, critic Maude I.G. Oliver, in “The Exhibition of the Society of Western Artists,” International Studio, Vol. 27, February 1906, p.CV, noted he: “departed from his native russets and painted various developments of lead colour,” and that “At near range we become conscious only of the merciless splashes and dashes of one who is working for crisp, clean effects and who knows exactly what he is doing, but, at a sufficient distance, we obtain an impression which, as was observed the other day by an appreciative rustic, ‘appears more natural’.” His style change and comparison to Dutch artists of the past was also discussed in Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 10/21/1905, p.10.

[96]The major Glasgow artists included Sir John Lavery (1856-1941), Alexander Ignatius Roche (1861-1923), Joseph Crawhall (1861-1913), Robert Macauley Stevenson (1854-1952), and Edward Arthur Walton (1860-1922).

[97]“The Exhibit Of The Society Of Western Artists: Work of Charles Francis Browne,” Sunday Inter Ocean, 12/25/1904, Magazine Section, p.5.

[98]Op. cit., Pattison, The Sketch Book, 1906, p.200.

[99]“Chicago Artists’ Exhibition And Art Sale,” Sketch Book, Vol. 5, No.6. February 1906, p.295.

[100]Op. cit., Sketch Book, February 1906, p.295.

[101]His Society of Western artists prize painting Landscape, Scotland (location unknown), was illustrated in: Maude I. G. Oliver, “Eleventh Annual Exhibition Of The Society of Western Artists,” International Studio, Vol. 31, March 1907, p.25.

[102]His departure was announced in Mae J. Evans, “What Chicago Artists Have Accomplished This Summer,” Sunday Inter Ocean, 9/13/1908, Magazine Section, p.2. His return was noted in Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 12/19/1908, p.4. Information on Browne’s sketching locales is taken from various painting titles in exhibitions. He painted in the French countryside of Giverny, Petit Audely, LaVacherie, and Pont de l’Arche.

[103]Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 1/9/1909, p.4.

[104]In 1908 he had again won the Fine Arts Building Prize at the annual exhibit of the Society of Western Artists with A Hillside (location unknown), illustrated in Maude I. G. Oliver, “Fine Pictures by Western Artists,” Chicago Record-Herald, 1/10/1909, Part 5, p.6. and Autumn (location unknown). The former was also illustrated in: Maude I. G. Oliver, “The Thirteenth Annual Exhibition Of The Society of Western Artists,” International Studio, Vol. 38, October 1909, pp.48.

[105]Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 5/22/1909, p.6. The article noted Browne’s studio was formerly occupied by his good friend Oliver Dennett Grover. It is interesting to note that while Browne’s stylistic development is readily attributed to his European trips of 1903 and 1908, by 1913 such a development is couched in terms distinctly ‘American’. See, for instance, George B. Zug, “Among the Art Galleries,” Chicago Inter-Ocean 7/20/1913, Vol. XLII, No. 118, p.5: “Charles Francis Browne…belongs to that group of contemporary painters who look back with indifference if not contempt at the spotting of blues and yellows by the Impressionists, who have forgotten even the tonal harmonies of Corot and the Frenchmen, and insist on being American…” An announcement in the Browne pamphlet file, Ryerson Library, Art Institute of Chicago, notes the exhibition opened May 15th and closed June 15, 1909 and was held at 1021 Fine Arts. Another review may be found in Harriet Monroe, “Portrait Studies in the Water Color Exhibit,” Chicago Tribune, 5/23/1909, Drama/Society/Editorial, p.5.

[106]She soon re-married a successful attorney. Information taken from Jan Stilson interview with Emily Taft Douglas, daughter of Lorado Taft, 1/3/1981, as recounted in Stilson, Art and Beauty in the Heartland, (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006), p.27.

[107]“Wife Quits Artist Browne,” Chicago Tribune, 4/1/1909, p.3.

[108]“Chicago Artist Starts Revolt: Charles Francis Browne Opens Fire on Futurists; Doubts Sincerity,” Chicago Tribune, 3/26/1913, p.15.

[109]“Artists Give Cubist Play,” Chicago Tribune, 3/27/1913, p.15.

[110]For further commentary see Milton W. Brown, The Story of The Armory Show, (New York: Abbeville Press, 2nd ed., 1988), 205-214. See also Chicago Examiner, 4/14/1913, in AIC Scrapbooks, Vol. 30, p.92, where it was noted that Clarkson and Browne also “denounced as modern madness nightmares and artistic degeneracy” the works at the annual meeting of the Municipal Art League.

[111]Op. cit., Garvey, Public Sculptor…, 1988), pp.170-71. Garvey suggests here that part of the extreme reaction by artists such as Browne, Clarkson, and Taft may have been because they felt remorse for the past by the works. He states, “Some of their obvious consternation may have been caused by the fact that, like Taft, they had discovered on return visits to their beloved Paris that old idols had been ‘replaced by strange gods’ or modernism.”

[112]“Cliff Dwellers’ Satirize the Cubist Art in Pointed Caricatures,” Chicago Examiner, 4/2/1913, in AIC Scrapbooks, Vol. 30, p.82. The article is illustrated with examples of the satires.

[113]“Battle Over ‘Cubism’,” Chicago Daily News, 3/26/1913, p.5.

[114]Chicago Record-Herald 4/9/1913, in AIC Scrapbooks, Vol. 30, p.91. Others who were originally critical of the show began to warm to its freshness of ideas. Harriet Monroe, “Cubist Art a Protest Against Narrow Conservatism,” Chicago Tribune, 4/6/1913, p.B5.

[115]“Panama Fair To Show U. S. Rich In Art,” Chicago Examiner, 5/23/1914, in AIC Scrapbooks, Vol. 31, pp.150-151.

[116]The commissioner general in Buenos Aires was John E. D. Trask, secretary and manager of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Browne traveled to the exposition and then with it from Buenos Aires to Santiago. “Chicago Artist Named To Act For Government,” Chicago Evening Post 3/9/1910, p.4. “Chicagoan To Help Select Buenos Aries Art Exhibit,” Chicago Tribune, 3/7/1910, p.7.

[117] “Among the Artists: Gossip of the Artists,” Chicago Record-Herald, 7/20/1913, Part 6, p.8: “Browne left the city Monday expecting to sail yesterday to join the American wanderers abroad….he expects to engage in strenuous work painting among the villages of France….during his sojourn Mr. Browne will visit the American painters…for…selecting exhibitions for…the Panama Exposition.” 1913 was a banner year for Browne as he was elected associate member to the National Academy of Design. Clarkson painted his membership portrait.

[118]Harriet Monroe, “An Early Rembrandt Masterpiece,” Chicago Tribune, 12/28/1913, p.G6.

[119]Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 1/15/1914, p.10. See also: Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 12/11/1913, p.8: “It is probable that about 1,200 paintings will be accepted….no artist to exhibit more than two or three… the exhibit will have a representation of painters from every section of the country…about 600 painters.” Browne also spent most of the summer and fall of 1915 collecting works in the East for the exposition. He remained mum about the hanging. “Art Exhibit at Frisco is Big,” Chicago Daily News, 2/8/1915, in AIC Scrapbooks, Vol. 32, p.131: “No word is being issued yet concerning the noteworthy paintings: that would be to star certain individuals and we do not want to do that. Let the visitors to the exposition do that.”

[120]“Payne Art Pleasing and Intelligible,” Chicago Tribune, 6/28/1914, p.E3.

[121]See Letter to Betty (Jayne Cronlund) from Gertrude N. Deem, 1988, BAA, and Letter to Jayne Cronlund from Dorothy Deem, 6/3/1988, BAA.

[122]See unnotated newspaper accounts in the IHAP Library courtesy of BAA.

[123]Letter to N. Dandridge Pendleton from Browne, 11/13/1916, BAA: “his tragic death has stimulated all especially the younger ones with a realization of the spiritual world….The ceremony in mid-August was a most beautiful and hopeful evidence of the realities of our New Church faith and life….I felt uplifted to a calm and serene height….He died, what I had proudly hoped he might be, a good New Church boy.”

[124]Evelyn Marie Stuart, “Chicago Artists’ Twenty-second Annual Exhibition,” Fine Arts Journal, Vol. 36, March 1918, p.9.

[125]“Charles Francis Browne,” in “News Of The Art World,” supplement, Chicago Evening Post, 12/3/1918, p.9. It was traveling here where he suffered an apoplectic stroke. “Mr. Browne Gets Well,” in “News Of The Art World,” supplement, Chicago Evening Post, 5/27/1919, p.11.

[126]Op. cit., Chicago Evening Post, 5/27/1919, p.11: “Browne is recovering from a severe illness at the Cottage hospital, Santa Barbara….’I am finishing my fourth week in bed’….he will summer at Eagle’s Nest.” Then in the “Notes of Our Friends,” in “News of the Art World,” Chicago Evening Post, 7/15/1919, p.11: “Browne has been brought from Eagle’s Nest Camp, Oregon, Illinois, to the Henrotin hospital where he is recovering. The journey from California was a test for his endurance, being made before he had fully recovered from his illness at Santa Barbara.” And then, “At the Art Institute,” in “News of the Art World,” supplement, Chicago Evening Post, 8/19/1919, p.11: “Browne who has been ill at the Henrotin hospital some weeks, has been taken to the house of a friend at Glenview.”

[127]Browne had held his own exhibition at the Artists’ Guild from December 6—December 15, 1919, the day before the opening of the benefit exhibition. “Special Exhibition by Charles Francis Browne,” typescript, The Artists’ Guild letterhead, 12/4/1919. His Autumn Hillside was illustrated in “Art,” Chicago Tribune, 1/4/1920, p.F8.

[128]Lena M. McCauley, “Friends Do Honors to Charles Francis Browne, A.N.A.,” in “News of the Art World,” Chicago Evening Post, 12/23/1919, p.9. Eleanor Jewett noted the amount at “over ten thousand dollars” in “Art,” Chicago Tribune, 1/25/1920, p.E11. Obituaries, “C.F. Browne, Noted Artist, Dies in East,” Chicago Tribune, 3/31/1920.

[129]Marguerite B. Williams, “Browne Exhibition on at Art Institute,” Chicago Daily News, 12/29/1919 in AIC Scrapbooks, Vol. 39, p.138. See also: “C.F. Browne, A.N.A.,” in “News of the Art World,” Chicago Evening Post, 12/16/1919, p.13. Browne’s ill health was reported in the same issue, “Landscape Painter Who Is Recovering,” p.2.

[130]Op. cit., McCauley, Chicago Evening Post, 12/23/1919, p.9. See also Op. cit., Jewett, Chicago Tribune, 12/21/1919, Part 8, p.6, and “Chicago,” American Art News, Vol. 18, No. 10, 12/27/1919, p5.

[131]Letter to N. Dandridge Pendleton from Browne, (no date, but written while recovering at the Nelson’s), BAA; and, Letter to Enoch Price from Browne, 10/9/1919, BAA. Browne also began to write for the New Church publication. See “Communications: Some Observations on the New Church Sermon,” New Church Life, February 1920, pp.111-114, and “A New Church Social Experiment with an unfinancial and optimistic theory for its bookkeeping,” New Church Life, March 1920, pp.156-60.

[132]Nearly every Chicago newspaper ran a notice in their obituaries. For the most information that seems to be recounted in the other newspapers see “C.F. Browne, Noted Artists, Dies in East,” Chicago Tribune, 3/31/1920. His obituary notice appeared nationally in Art News, 4/10/1920.

[133]Jayne Cronlund, “Charles Francis Browne, 1859-1920,” Glencairn Museum Newsletter, August 1988, and Bryn Athyn Journal of Education, February 1924, p.27. While some of the paintings have been deaccessioned over the years, the vast majority are still housed in Bryn Athyn.

[134]“A Line O’ Type Or Two,” Chicago Tribune, 9/10/1942, p.12. The works were subsequently auctioned off in 1942.

[135]Lorado Taft, Paintings by Charles Francis Browne, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 12/16/1919), forward.