Collection: John George Brown

John George Brown, born in 1831 in Durham, England, was an American artist known for his genre scenes depicting street urchins in New York. He studied at the School of Design, Newcastle-on-Tyne and the Trustees Academy, Edinburgh. Brown expressed a deep affinity for his subjects, saying, "They will change their dress, as though to show the extent of their wardrobe. Being cautioned expressly on Saturday, and told to return in the same fustian jacket your boy will appear on Monday morning, if he appears at all, in a red woolen shirt. And they are constantly having their hair trimmed--perfect dandies! I do not paint poor boys solely because the public likes such pictures and pays me for them, but because I love the boys myself, for I, too, was once a poor lad like them." He passed away in 1913 in New York City, which was also his home for many years.