DOI issue:
Nr. 190 (January 1909)
DOI article:Wood, T. Martin: An American painter in Paris: George Elmer Browne
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20965#0311
George Eimer Browne, American Painter
and for an instance, Mr. Elmer Browne’s. Into his
subjects themselves, as well as in his treatment of
them, for all that it savours still a little of Paris,
a meaning is to be read by susceptible people.
There is a representation of open country and
sweeping sky peculiar to his birth-land ; a sense of
vast nature the loneliness of which is even empha-
sised by so large a group of figures as in The Wain
Team ; land until lately as untrodden as the sea,
except for the tribe whose life once harmonised
with nature as closely as the animals they hunted.
Mr. Browne’s art will grow more interesting as it
grows more than ever characteristic of this native
quality with which he acquaints us in his present
work—a quality which, whilst it can only find
expression in painting with the finest virtues of
craft, must not be confused with those virtues.
It is related to that quite inexplicable element in
the mind which gives a painter a preference for
one thing over another ; that, though he sees the
beauty of both, makes him
only feel the beauty of one,
and that makes the same
scene seem a different
scene to an Englishman
and an American. Mr.
Elmer Browne has told me
that he cannot look upon
English landscape as our
landscape painters look
upon it. He looks for what
are called “bigger” things,
more elemental states. The
hand of tillage, so far as I
can gather, is to him about
as vandalistic as the jerry-
builder. I cannot, without
amusement, imagine him
painting gardens. This
anxiety to escape the tram-
mels of culture, to defy the
civilising hand and sing
the praises of the loose
vagaries of nature, is inter-
esting only when, as here,
we receive proof by inter-
pretation that the painter
knows what nature is. For
the greater the idea that
you cheapen, the greater
the cheapness. Mr. Elmer
Browne is still at the thresh-
old of his noblest ambi-
tions, but already he has “evening mist”
clearly proved his singleness of heart. Our
standard of criticism is determined by our interest
in his aspirations, any mere commentary upon
his dexterity in maintaining a certain standard of
execution being relevant to those older days before
he emerged with some hundred others equally
dexterous from Julian’s Academy and “found him-
self,” as the saying is. He realised that he was an
American, as he had not done in a country full of
them, and that if he had an art at all it would be
American. He encountered the old masters as he
left the French school, and it was they that took
the scales from his eyes. That was about 1900, at
the time that he sent his first works to the Salon.
In 1904 his work, Bait Sellers of Cape Cod, was
purchased by the French Government. His first
visit to Holland was in the year 1901, and the
great Dutch sentimentalists, Rembrandt and Van
Meer, gave him the greatest lesson he had ever
received in mere craft.
BY GEORGE ELMER BROWNE
and for an instance, Mr. Elmer Browne’s. Into his
subjects themselves, as well as in his treatment of
them, for all that it savours still a little of Paris,
a meaning is to be read by susceptible people.
There is a representation of open country and
sweeping sky peculiar to his birth-land ; a sense of
vast nature the loneliness of which is even empha-
sised by so large a group of figures as in The Wain
Team ; land until lately as untrodden as the sea,
except for the tribe whose life once harmonised
with nature as closely as the animals they hunted.
Mr. Browne’s art will grow more interesting as it
grows more than ever characteristic of this native
quality with which he acquaints us in his present
work—a quality which, whilst it can only find
expression in painting with the finest virtues of
craft, must not be confused with those virtues.
It is related to that quite inexplicable element in
the mind which gives a painter a preference for
one thing over another ; that, though he sees the
beauty of both, makes him
only feel the beauty of one,
and that makes the same
scene seem a different
scene to an Englishman
and an American. Mr.
Elmer Browne has told me
that he cannot look upon
English landscape as our
landscape painters look
upon it. He looks for what
are called “bigger” things,
more elemental states. The
hand of tillage, so far as I
can gather, is to him about
as vandalistic as the jerry-
builder. I cannot, without
amusement, imagine him
painting gardens. This
anxiety to escape the tram-
mels of culture, to defy the
civilising hand and sing
the praises of the loose
vagaries of nature, is inter-
esting only when, as here,
we receive proof by inter-
pretation that the painter
knows what nature is. For
the greater the idea that
you cheapen, the greater
the cheapness. Mr. Elmer
Browne is still at the thresh-
old of his noblest ambi-
tions, but already he has “evening mist”
clearly proved his singleness of heart. Our
standard of criticism is determined by our interest
in his aspirations, any mere commentary upon
his dexterity in maintaining a certain standard of
execution being relevant to those older days before
he emerged with some hundred others equally
dexterous from Julian’s Academy and “found him-
self,” as the saying is. He realised that he was an
American, as he had not done in a country full of
them, and that if he had an art at all it would be
American. He encountered the old masters as he
left the French school, and it was they that took
the scales from his eyes. That was about 1900, at
the time that he sent his first works to the Salon.
In 1904 his work, Bait Sellers of Cape Cod, was
purchased by the French Government. His first
visit to Holland was in the year 1901, and the
great Dutch sentimentalists, Rembrandt and Van
Meer, gave him the greatest lesson he had ever
received in mere craft.
BY GEORGE ELMER BROWNE