Vaudois”:—covering the period from 1849 to 1877. “Sardanapalus and Myrrha,” begun within the same period, was finished later. He produced, moreover, a great number of excellent cartoons for stained glass, being up to 1874 a member of the firm of decorative art, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. He also executed, in colours or in crayons, various portraits, including his own. From 1878 he was almost engrossed by work which he undertook for the town hall of Manchester, and which entailed his living for some few years in that city—twelve large wall paintings, some of them done in a modified form of the Gambier-Parry process, and others in oils on canvas applied to the wall surface. They present a compendium of the history of Manchester and its district, from the building of the Roman camp at Mancunium to the experimental work of Dalton in elaborating the atomic theory. This is an extremely fine series, though with some diversity of individual merit in the paintings, and is certainly the chief representative, in the United Kingdom, of any such form of artistic effort—if we leave out of count the works (by various painters) in the Houses of Parliament.
Madox Brown was never a popular or highly remunerated artist. Up to near middle age he went through trying straits in money matters; afterwards his circumstances improved, but he was not really well off at any time. In youth he followed the usual course as an exhibiting painter, but after some mortifications and heart-burnings he did little in this way after 1852. He held, however, in 1865, an exhibition of his own then numerous paintings and designs. He also delivered a few lectures on fine art from time to time. From 1868 he suffered from gout; and this led to an attack of apoplexy, from which he died in London on the 6th of October 1893. He was a man of upright, independent and honourable character, of warm affections, a steady and self-sacrificing friend; but he took offence rather readily, and viewed various persons and institutions with a degree of suspicion which may be pronounced excessive. He felt interest in many questions outside the range of his art, and, being a good and varied talker, had often something apposite and suggestive to say about them. On more than one occasion he exerted himself very zealously for the benefit of the working classes. In politics he was a consistent Democrat, and on religious questions an Agnostic.
The life of this artist has been well written by his grandson, Ford M. Hueffer, in a handsomely illustrated volume entitled Ford Madox Brown (London, 1896). This volume contains some extracts from Brown’s diary, extending in the whole from 1847 to 1865; and other lengthier extracts appear in two books edited by William M. Rossetti—Ruskin, Rossetti, Pre-Raphaelitism (1899), and Pre-Raphaelite Diaries and Letters (1899). See also the Preferences in Art, &c., by Harry Quilter (1892), and a pamphlet, Ford Madox Brown (1901), by Helen Rossetti (Angeli), applicable to a collection of his works exhibited in the Whitechapel Art Gallery. (W. M. R.)
BROWN, FRANCIS (1849–), American Semitic scholar, was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on the 26th of December 1849, the son of Samuel Gilman Brown (1813–1885), president of Hamilton College from 1867 to 1881, and the grandson of Francis Brown (1784–1820), whose removal from the presidency of Dartmouth College and later restoration were incidental to the famous “Dartmouth College case.” The younger Francis graduated from Dartmouth in 1870 and from the Union Theological Seminary in 1877, and then studied in Berlin. In 1879 he became instructor in biblical philology at the Union Theological Seminary, in 1881 an associate professor of the same subject, and in 1890 professor of Hebrew and cognate languages.[1] Dr Brown’s published works have won him honorary degrees from the universities of Glasgow and Oxford, as well as from Dartmouth and Yale; they are, with the exception of The Christian Point of View (1902; with Profs. A. C. McGiffert and G. W. Knox), almost purely linguistic and lexical, and include Assyriology: its Use and Abuse in Old Testament Study (1885), and the important revision of Gesenius, undertaken with S. R. Driver and C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1891–1905).
BROWN, SIR GEORGE (1790–1865), British soldier, was born and educated in Elgin, Scotland. He obtained a commission in the 43rd (now 1st Bn. Oxfordshire) Light Infantry in 1806, was promoted lieutenant a few months later, and saw active service for the first time in the Mediterranean and at Copenhagen, 1806 and 1807. The 43rd was one of the earliest arrivals in Spain when the Peninsular War broke out, and Brown was with his regiment at Vimeiro, and in the Corunna retreat. Later in 1809 the famous Light Division was formed, and with Craufurd he was present at all the actions of 1810–1811, being severely wounded at Talavera; he was then promoted captain and attended the Staff College at Great Marlow until (late in 1812) he returned to the Peninsula as a captain in the 85th. With this regiment he served under Major-General Lord Aylmer at the Nivelle and Nive, his conduct winning for him the rank of major. The 85th was next employed under General Robert Ross in America, and Brown, who received a severe wound at the action of Bladensburg, was promoted to a lieut.-colonelcy. At the age of twenty-five, with a brilliant war record, he received an appointment at the Horse Guards, and remained in London for over twenty-five years in various staff positions. He was made a colonel and K.H. in 1831, and by 1852 had arrived at the rank of lieut.-general and the dignity of K.C.B. At this time he was adjutant-general, but on the appointment of Lord Hardinge to the post of commander-in-chief, Brown left the Horse Guards. In 1854, on the despatch of a British force to the East, Sir George Brown was appointed to command the Light Division. This he led in action, and administered in camp, on Peninsular principles, and, whilst preserving the strictest discipline to a degree which came in for criticism, he made himself beloved by his men. At Alma he had a horse shot under him. At Inkerman he was wounded whilst leading the French Zouaves into action. In the following year, when an expedition against Kertch and the Russian communications was decided upon, Brown went in command of the British contingent. He was invalided home on the day of Lord Raglan’s death. From March 1860 to March 1865 he was commander-in-chief in Ireland. At the time of his death in 1865 he was general and G.C.B., colonel of the 32nd Regiment and colonel-in-chief of the Rifle Brigade.
BROWN, GEORGE (1818–1880), Canadian journalist and statesman, was born in Edinburgh on the 29th of November 1818, and was educated in his native city. With his father, Peter Brown (d. 1863), he emigrated to New York in 1838; and in 1843 they removed to Toronto, and began the publication of The Banner, a politico-religious paper in support of the newly formed Free Church of Scotland. In 1844 he began, independently of his father, the issue of the Toronto Globe. This paper, at first weekly, became in 1853 a daily, and through the ability and energy of Brown, came to possess an almost tyrannical influence over the political opinion of Ontario. In 1851 he entered the Canadian parliament as member for Kent county. Though giving at first a modified support to the Reform government, he soon broke with it and became leader of the Radical or “Clear Grit” party. His attacks upon the Roman Catholic church and on the supposed domination in parliament of the French Canadian section made him very unpopular in Lower Canada, but in Upper Canada his power was great. Largely owing to his attacks, the Clergy Reserves were secularized in 1854. He championed the complete laicization of the schools in Ontario, but unsuccessfully, the Roman Catholic church maintaining its right to separate schools. He also fought for the representation by population of the two provinces in parliament, the Act of Union (1841) having granted an equal number of representatives to each. This principle of “Rep. by Pop.” was conceded by the British North America Act (1867). In 1858 Brown became premier of “The Short Administration,” which was defeated and compelled to resign after an existence of two days.
He was one of the earliest advocates of a federation of the British colonies in North America, and in 1864, to accomplish this end, entered into a coalition with his bitter personal and political opponent, Mr (afterwards Sir) John A. Macdonald.
- ↑ In 1908 he succeeded Charles Cuthbert Hall (1852–1908) as president of the seminary.
