Possibly commissioned by one of the sugar factory's owners, Brown's "View of the Forest City Sugar Refinery, Portland, from Across the Fore River,” circa 1860, made the industrial site look benign and almost elegant across the serene river. Portland Museum of Art.
:The work of Portland native Harrison Bird Brown, one of Maine's finest painters, has faded somewhat from public appreciation in recent decades. One of the state's most popular and prolific Nineteenth Century artists, he is best known for his cityscapes and seascapes, which he depicted with notable precision and vigor. By the time he left Portland in the early 1890s, Brown was the best known native Maine painter of his time.
"Vividly True to Nature: Harrison Bird Brown, 1831–1915," on view at the Portland Museum of Art through September 9, will go a long way toward restoring the painter's high standing. Organized by Jessica Skwire Routhier, the museum's associate curator, it comprises some 40 oil paintings, plus works on paper and memorabilia of Brown's life. Featured are views of Portland and the Maine coast, as well as scenes in the White Mountains, the Canadian Maritimes and Europe.
Utilizing rich colors and filtered light, Brown often suffused his work with brooding undertones that give his romanticized paintings enduring appeal. As Routhier observes, "In his lifetime, Brown was recognized as a painter of works with vigor, that challenged the viewer, that were not always pleasantly beautiful but frequently disquieting, thus embodying the tensions of the age which shaped his art."
"Fog at White Head,” painted by Brown after 1885, and depicting waves crashing against Cushing Island's rocky cliffs, was created on a scale, 14 by 25 inches, that made it attractive to middle-class patrons. Portland Museum of Art.
Growing up in Portland, young Harry Brown showed early drawing ability. After his father died when he was 15, the future artist left school to become the star apprentice at Forbes and Wilson, the prominent Portland house and ship painters. The teenager gained the approval of his employer with accomplished painted signs and landscapes covering the walls of the firm.
Completing his apprenticeship around 1850, Brown struck out on his own, advertising himself as "H.B. BROWN, Banner, Sign and Ornamental PAINTER." Over the next few years, while turning out various "fancy" pieces, temperance and military banners, and signs for local businesses, he experimented with portraits, marines and landscapes.
Like pioneering Portland landscape painter Charles Codman (1800–1842), who earlier did banner and decorative work on the side, Brown's canvases attracted the admiration of the city's chief art critic, John Neal. He described an early Brown landscape as "really rich, clever, and full of promise….I urged him, with all earnestness, to try his hand at landscapes, sea views, etc., to begin at once, and to lose no time."
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