Woman of the Century/Jennie Brownscombe

BROWNSCOMBE, Miss Jennie, artist, born near Honesdale, Pa., 10th December, 1850. Her father, a farmer, was a native of Devonshire, England. Her mother belonged to a family conspicuous among the Connecticut pioneers, who came to the Colonies in 1640 with Governor Winthrop. Miss Brownscombe was the only child. She was studious and precocious, and about equally inclined to art and literature. She early showed a talent for drawing, and when only seven years old she began drawing, using the juices of flowers and leaves with which to color her pictures. In school she illustrated every book that had a blank leaf or margin available. Her father died before she left school, and her mother in 1891. When Jennie was eighteen years old, she began to teach school, and at the age of twenty she became a student in the Cooper Institute School of Design for Women in New York, from which she won a medal at the end of a year, and for several succeeding years she studied in the National Academy, winning first medals in the life and antique schools. In the second year of her study she began to make drawings on wood for "Harper's Weekly" and other periodicals, and to teach drawing and painting. She devoted her study mainly to genre figure painting and has made a large number of portraits. Her first important picture was exhibited in 1876 in the Academy of Design in New York. She was one of the first members of the Art JENNIE BROWNSCOMBE. Students' League. In 1883 she went to Paris and studied under Harry Moster. On her return in 1883 she was incapacitated from work by an injury to her eyes, and for a year she did but little. Her pictures have been reproduced in photogravures, etchings and engravings for the past six years. Some of her most widely known pictures are "Grandmother's Treasures," "Love's Young Dream," "Blossom Time," "Halcyon Days," "The Gleaners." "Sunday Morning in Sleepy Hollow," "The Recessional" and "The Sirens. Miss Brownscombe now lives in Honesdale, Pa.