Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/358

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Brown

other magazines. In 1870 Broome was appointed secretary of the fund for the completion of St. Paul's Cathedral; in 1873 secretary to the royal commission on unseaworthy ships; and in 1875 colonial secretary of Natal, whither he proceeded as a member of Sir Garnet (now Viscount) Wolseley's special mission. In 1877 he was nominated colonial secretary of the Isle of Mauritius, and in 1880 he became lieutenant-governor. While administering the government of the island as secretary he earned the approbation of the home government, as well as the thanks of the South African colonies, by his prompt despatch of the greater part of the garrison to South Africa after the disaster of Isandhlwana. In 1882 he was nominated governor of Western Australia.

At that time Western Australia was still a crown colony. Broome turned his attention to the development of its natural wealth. The first years of his administration were marked by a rapid extension of railways and telegraphs, and increasing prosperity was accompanied by a growing desire for representative government. Broome warmly espoused the colonial view, and accompanied his despatches with urgent recommendations to grant a constitution such as the legislature of the colony requested. In 1889, when the bill was blocked in the home parliament in consequence of difficulties attending the transfer of crown lands, Broome himself proceeded to London with other delegates to urge the matter on the colonial office. On 21 Oct. 1890 Western Australia received its constitution, and Broome's term of office came to an end. He left the colony amid great popular demonstrations of gratitude for his services.

He proceeded to the West Indies, where he was appointed acting governor of Barbadoes, and afterwards governor of Trinidad. He died in London on 26 Nov. 1896 at 51 Welbeck Street, and was buried at Highgate cemetery on 30 Nov. On 21 June 1865 he married Mary Anne, eldest daughter of Walter J. Stewart, island secretary of Jamaica, and widow of Sir George Robert Barker [q. v.]

[Times, 28 Nov. 1896; Men and Women of the Time, 1895; Burke's Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage.]

E. I. C.

BROWN, FORD MADOX (1821–1893), painter, was born at Calais, where, because of their narrow circumstances, his parents were then living, on 16 April 1821. His father. Ford Brown, a retired commissary in the British navy, in which capacity he had served on board the Saucy Arethusa of that day, was the second son of Dr. John Brown (1735–1788) [q. v.] At Calais Ford Madox, who owed his second name to his mother, daughter of Tristram Maries Madox of Greenwich, a member of a reputable Kentish family, showed, even in childhood, strong artistic proclivities, which his father assisted by placing the lad successively under Professor Gregorius in the academy at Bruges, under Van Hanselaer at Ghent, and finally with Baron Wappers, a very accomplished and successful teacher, though an indifferent artist, who was then at the head of the academy at Antwerp. It was at Antwerp that, during a sojourn of nearly three years, the youth, who was already producing portraits for small sums and otherwise testing his skill, acquired that sound and searching knowledge of technical methods, from oil-painting to lithography, which distinguished him in after-life. So early as 1837 a work by Brown was exhibited with success at Ghent, and in 1839 he sold a picture in England. In 1840 he married his first wife, his cousin Elizabeth, sister of Sir Richard Madox Bromley [q. v.] Pursuing his studies with extreme zest and energy, Madox Brown was able to exhibit at the English academy in 1841 'The Giaour's Confession,' a Byronic subject treated in the Byronic manner, but powerfully and with sympathetic insight of a sort. He worked at Antwerp and, later, in Paris till 1842. About this period he executed on a life-size scale the very dark and conventional 'Parisina's Sleep,' which, before it was shown at the British Institution in 1845, had the strange fortune of being rejected at the salon of 1843 because it was 'too improper.'

In 1843-4 Madox Brown was still in Paris, diligently copying old masters' pictures in the Louvre, studying from the life in the ateliers of his contemporaries, and ambitiously devoting himself to the preparation of works intended to compete at the exhibition in Westminster Hall. There, in 1844, Brown laid the foundations of his honours in artistic if not in popular opinion by means of a cartoon of life-size figures representing in a vigorous and expressive design the 'Bringing the Body of Harold to the Conqueror;' he also exhibited an encaustic sketch, and a smaller cartoon. In 1845 he was again represented at Westminster by three works, being frescoes, including a figure of 'Justice,' which won all artistic eyes and the highest praise of B. R. Haydon. Nothing was then rarer in London than a fresco. Dyce alone had produced an important example of the method.

Induced by his wife's bad health to visit