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Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné
Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, MA, Project Manager

Catalogue Entry

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Photo: Courtesy the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The Brown Family, 1869 (Hills no. 31.7.4). Detail
Detail
Photo: Patricia Hills
The Brown Family, 1869 (Hills no. 31.7.4). Detail
Detail
Photo: Patricia Hills
The Brown Family, 1869 (Hills no. 31.7.4). Detail
Detail
Photo: Patricia Hills
[ 31.7 U.S. Portraits, Groups ]info
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31.7 U.S. Portraits, Groups

Some of Johnson’s most memorable paintings were his small scale compositions of family groups. Such works as these, traditionally called “conversation pieces,” trace their pedigree to England and seventeenth-century Holland. They were commissioned group portraits of wealthy patrons as they wanted to be seen, usually surrounded by sumptuous furnishing and a coterie of family and friends. —PH

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Hills no. 31.7.4
The Brown Family
de Young Museum - Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco title: Portraits (The Brown Family)
Alternate titles: Portraits; Wealthy Interior
1869
Oil on canvas
38 1/2 x 32 3/8 in. (97.8 x 82.2 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: E. Johnson./1869
de Young Museum - Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd (1979.7.67)
Description / Remarks

MacGibeny, 2021: Marcotte furniture, noted in the Hirschl & Adler exhibition catalogue description of this painting, is also featured in Johnson's 1876 portrait Frederick Wells Gale, set in the parlor of Gale's home in Troy, New York.

Hirschl & Adler, Faces and Places: Changing Images of 19th Century America, 1972: "In this conversation piece, James Brown, a prominent banker and shipping magnate of his day, is seated with his wife Eliza Coe Brown, and their grandchild, William Adams Brown, in the parlor of their University Place home. That parlor was designed by the famous cabinet maker and decorator Leon Marcotte after 1846 and was dismantled in 1869 when the Brown family moved uptown to Park Avenue. A Mathew Brady photograph of the late 1850s showing Mrs. Brown in the same pose as in this picture may have been used by Johnson in working out the composition of this painting."

Provenance
John Crosby Brown and Mary Adams Brown, New York, 1869–1918
John Crosby Brown II and Margaret Courtwright Brown, New York and Old Lyme, Connecticut, 1943–1971 (by descent)
[Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1971–1972]
John D. Rockefeller 3rd and Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller, New York, 1972–1979 (by purchase)
de Young Museum - Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, April 5, 1979 (by gift)
Exhibitions
1869 NAD
National Academy of Design, New York, Forty-fourth Annual Exhibition, [April 14–June 28,] 1869. (NAD 1869), no. 196, as Portraits, owner J. C. Brown.
1970 Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 19th-Century America: Paintings and Sculpture, 1970, no. 143, b/w illus., as The Brown Family.
1972 Hirschl & Adler
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, Faces and Places: Changing Images of Nineteenth-Century America, December 5, 1972–January 6, 1973, no. 51, illus., n.p., as The Brown Family.
1976 San Francisco
San Francisco, San Francisco, 1976, no. 79.
1979 M. H. de Young Memorial Museum
M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, Eastman Johnson: Seven Paintings by the Highly Regarded Nineteenth-Century American Artist, December 1979–January 1980. (M. H. de Young Memorial Museum 1979).
1982 National Museum of Western Art
The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, American Painting 1730–1960: A Selection from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, July 27–September 19, 1982. (Lovell 1982), no. 50. Traveled to: Fukuoka Municipal Museum, Fukuoka, Japan, October 2–31, 1982.
1999 Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York, Eastman Johnson: Painting America, October 29, 1999–February 6, 2000. (Exhibition catalogue: Carbone and Hills 1999), no. 36, color illus., p. 71, as The Brown Family. Traveled to: San Diego Museum of Fine Arts, San Diego, February 25–May 21, 2000; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, June 8–September 10, 2000.
References
NAD 1869
New York: National Academy of Design, 1869. Exhibition catalogue (1869 NAD), no. 196, as Portraits, owner J. C. Brown.
Brown 1940
Brown, William Adams. A Teacher and His Times: A Story of Two Worlds. New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940, p. 41.
Kouwenhoven 1968
Kouwenhoven, John A. Partners in Banking: An Historical Portrait of a Great Private Bank, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co, 1818–1968. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968, p. 141 illus.
Metropolitan Museum of Art 1970
19th Century America: Paintings and Sculpture. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, distributed by New York Graphic Society, 1970. Exhibition catalogue, n.p., no. 143, as The Brown Family.
Hirschl & Adler Galleries 1972
Hirschl & Adler Galleries. Faces and Places: Changing Images of 19th Century America. New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1972, n.p., frontispiece and no. 51, illus., as The Brown Family.
Hills 1977
Hills, Patricia. The Genre Paintings of Eastman Johnson: The Sources and Development of His Style and Themes. New York: Garland Publishing, 1977, pp. xiv, 112, 118–22, 164, as The Brown Family.
The American Canvas 1989
Simpson, Marc, Sally Mills, and Jennifer Saville. The American Canvas: Paintings from the Collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1989. Exhibition catalogue, pp. 112–13, 238.
Davis 1996
Davis, John. "Children in the Parlor: Eastman Johnson's 'Brown Family' and the Post-Civil War Luxury Interior." American Art (Washington, D.C.) 10, no. 2 (Summer 1996).
Carbone and Hills 1999
Carbone, Teresa A., and Patricia Hills. Eastman Johnson: Painting America. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum of Art, in association with Rizzoli International Publications, 1999. Exhibition catalogue (1999 Brooklyn Museum), p. 71, no. 36, as The Brown Family.
Simon 2003
Simon, David L. "Eastman Johnson's Lunchtime." Colby Quarterly 39, no. 4 (December 2003).
Hills Examination / Opinion
Examination date(s): 1970-08; 2018-02-27
Examination notes: 2018-02-27: Exquisite details.
Sitter Biography
Sitter: Brown, James
Biography:

James Brown. Prominent banker and shipping magnate. Seated in the parlor (designed by famous cabinet maker and decorator Leon Marcotte) of his University Place home with his wife Eliza Coe Brown and their grandchild, William Adams Brown. They would later move uptown to Park Avenue. A photograph from the 1850s of Mrs. Brown in this same pose may have been used by Johnson to work out the composition [Hirschl & Adler, Faces and Places: Changing Images of 19th Century America, 1972].

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Record last updated March 22, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "The Brown Family, 1869 (Hills no. 31.7.4)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=703 (accessed on May 5, 2024).