Jennie Augusta Brownscombe

Jennie Augusta Brownscombe (December 10, 1850 – August 5, 1936) was an American painter, designer, etcher, commercial artist, and illustrator. Brownscombe studied art for years in the United States and in Paris. She was a founding member, student and teacher at the Art Students League of New York. She made genre paintings, including revolutionary and colonial American history, most notably The First Thanksgiving held at Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, Massachusetts. She sold the reproduction rights to more than 100 paintings, and images of her work have appeared on prints, calendars and greeting cards. Her works are in many public collections and museums. In 1899 she was described by New York World as "one of America's best artists".

Personal life Brownscombe was born December 10, 1850 in a -story farmhouse near Irving Cliff in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, the only child of a farmer from Devonshire, England, William Brownscombe, and American Elvira Kennedy Brownscombe. Her father is believed to have emigrated to the United States about 1840Kent Ahrens. "Jennie Brownscombe: American History Painter."] Woman's Art Journal Vol. 1, No. 2 (Autumn, 1980 – Winter, 1981), pp. 25–29. and built the home she was born and raised in. Her mother, Elvira Kennedy Brownscombe, was a descendant of a Mayflower passenger and Isaac Stearns who arrived in the colonies in 1630. During her life, Jennie Brownscombe was an active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Mayflower Descendants and the Historic and Scenic Preservation Society.

Her mother, a talented writer and artist, fostered Brownscombe's interest in poetry and art. She won awards at the Wayne County Fair for her work when she was a high school student.Jennie Brownscombe: Wayne County's Own . Wayne County Historical Society. Retrieved February 10, 2014.

After her father's death in 1868, Brownscombe earned a living teaching high school in HonesdalePennsylvania Biographical Dictionary. Third ed. St. Clair Shores, Michigan: Somerset Publishers; . p. 159–160. and creating book and magazine illustrations,Jennie Augusta Brownscombe. National Museum of Women in the Arts. Retrieved February 9, 2014.Jennie Augusta Brownscombe. CLARA Database of Women Artists. National Museum of Women in the Arts. Retrieved February 9, 2014. which were inspired by the streams and fields around her home and nearby Irving Cliff. She was described as "slender, with a thin face in which large brown eyes and a dimpled chin were distinctive, and reserved in manner. She lived simply with one companion or servant.

Brownscombe studied art in New York and then in Paris in 1882. She returned to the United States and an eye injury prevented her from painting until 1884 when she worked in a New York City studio.Carol Kort; Liz Sonneborn. A to Z of American Women in the Visual Arts. Infobase Publishing; 1 January 2002. . pp. 35–36. She often visited her mother in Honesdale, until her death in 1891.

Between 1885 and 1896 Brownscombe spent the winters in Rome Italy, where she met artist George Henry Hall with who was her companion and mentor. In the summers they shared a studio in Palenville in the New York Catskill Mountains from about 1908 until Hall died in 1913. Hall "deeply influenced Brownscombe's sense of style, color and craftsmanship."Carol Kort; Liz Sonneborn. A to Z of American Women in the Visual Arts. Infobase Publishing; 1 January 2002. . p. 36. When he died, Hall left his home and property in the Catskills to Brownscombe,Brooklyn Museum. The Brooklyn Museum Quarterly. The Museum; 1922. p. 159. including the painting "Danaë and the Golden Shower" by John Smibert. Its location was unknown as of 1969.Henry Wilder Foote, John Smibert, Painter: With a Descriptive Catalogue of Portraits and Notes on the Work of Nathaniel Smibert. New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1969. p. 230. After Hall's death, Brownscombe spent the winters in Bayside and New York City and the summer in the Catskills.

She donated a wide range of works of art to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. By 1912 she had donated a self-portrait made by George Henry Hall, a watercolor painting made by Hall of a Pompeiian fresco, 18th-century brocades, and a sketchbook of Sanford Robinson Gifford.Brooklyn Museum. Report. 1912. p. 246. By 1917 she had donated other textiles, a silver filigree brooch, and a 17th-century Flemish tapestry that depicted the marriage of Alexander the Great and Roxana.Brooklyn Museum. Report Upon the Condition and Progress of the Museums for the Year Ending .... Brooklyn Museum; 1917. pp. 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 92. She also donated a George Henry Hall sketchbook, a 15th-century textile, and a pair of Etruscan earrings.Search: Jennie Brownscombe. Collections. Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved February 11, 2014.

Education

In 1871, she went to New York City, studied under Victor NehligEdward T. James; Janet Wilson James; Paul S. Boyer. Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Harvard University Press; 1 January 1971. . pp. 258–259. and graduated from the Cooper Institute School of Design for Women in 1872. She studied at the National Academy of Design for a couple of years under Lemuel Wilmarth until she became a founding member and student of the Art Students League of New York. She made illustrations, wrote short pieces about art for the newspapers, and taught art classes at the Art Students League to defray tuition and other expenses and studied there until 1878, when she continued her studies at the National Academy of Design until 1881. At the Academy Brownscombe won honorable mention, the first prize Elliott Medal in the Antique School and the first prize Suydam Medal in the Life studies school. After completing her studies at the Academy, she traveled to Europe and studied in Paris under Henry Mosler, a genre painter in his Brittany and Paris studios.

Career

Overview Brownscome worked as a water color and oil painter, illustrator, etcher, designer, and commercial artist. She made portraits and genre paintings. Art historian Eleanor Tufts said that Brownscombe had a "penchant for narrative painting rendered with realism." Her paintings, which depicted both emotional scenes and historical ones, were exhibited in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and London. She sold the reproduction rights to more than 100 of her works, which were produced for greeting cards, calendars and prints in the late 19th century.Carol Kort; Liz Sonneborn. A to Z of American Women in the Visual Arts. Infobase Publishing; 1 January 2002. . p. 35. Some of her popular paintings are the "idealized vision of traditional rural life and family" in Love's Young Dream (1887)Love's Young Dream. National Museum of Women in the Arts. Retrieved February 10, 2014. and The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth (1914), in the collection of the Pilgrim Hall Museum at Plymouth, Massachusetts.Marge Hook, Sally Eno Soden, Gloria McCullough, and Ann O'Hara. Jennie Brownscombe's Homestead . Wayne County Historical Society. Retrieved February 10, 2014. In 1899 she was described by New York World as "one of America's best artists".

She was a member of the New York Women Painters Society, American Artists Professional League, National Arts Club, and the Municipal Art Society.

Genre paintings Her first sold painting was Grandmother's Treasures, made in 1876. Exhibited in the 1876 National Academy of Design show, it was described as a "large and cleverly painted interior... with figures." The painting she made in 1879, The New Scholar, is listed in the book, Index to Reproductions of American Paintings: A Guide to Pictures Occurring in More Than Eight Hundred Books.Isabel Stevenson Monro and Kate M. Monro, Index to Reproductions of American Paintings: A Guide to Pictures Occurring in More Than Eight Hundred Books. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1948. p. 107. Although she primarily made genre paintings, she also made portraits and experimented with Impressionism, such as in the 1885 painting, Apple Orchards in May where she dotted green and white paint "to give the impression of the wispy, lovely bloom of apple trees in springtime."

"New Woman" illustrator As educational opportunities were made more available in the 19th century, women artists became part of professional enterprises, including founding their own art associations. Artwork made by women was considered to be inferior, and to help overcome that stereotype women became "increasingly vocal and confident" in promoting women's work, and thus became part of the emerging image of the educated, modern and freer "New Woman".Laura R. Prieto. At Home in the Studio: The Professionalization of Women Artists in America. Harvard University Press; 2001. . pp. 145–146. Artists "played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplyfying this emerging type through their own lives." In the late 19th century and early 20th century about 88% of the subscribers of 11,000 magazines and periodicals were women. As women entered the artist community, publishers hired women to create illustrations that depict the world through a woman's perspective. Brownscombe's work expressed a sentimental viewpoint, as in Love's Young Dream and a feminine perspective is evident in The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth which depicts a woman in the foreground with her two children. Other successful illustrators were Jessie Wilcox Smith, Rose O'Neill, Elizabeth Shippen Green, and Violet Oakley.Laura R. Prieto. At Home in the Studio: The Professionalization of Women Artists in America. Harvard University Press; 2001. . pp. 160–161.

She sold the reproduction rights to more than 100 of her works, which were produced for greeting cards, calendars and prints in the late 19th century. About 1882 reproductions of her paintings became popular and printers sought out Brownscombe for her paintings, which were well-made but also became "stilted and repetitious".

In Love's Young Dream, Brownscombe depicts a mother looking on with fond interest at a woman whose attention is transfixed towards an approaching man on horseback, her father intent on his reading. "Brownscombe contrasts the right-hand side of the picture, where all three figures have been placed, with the left, where an unencumbered view of the landscape stretches back to mist-shrouded hills." Washington Post art critic Paul Richard commented that the 1887 painting of a young woman, with childhood behind her, yearns for making a home with a man, rather than a career. He said, "It is not easy to imagine – harem scenes aside – a less liberated picture."

Colonial Revival