Frederick Brown - Impromptu Dance, a Scene on the Chelsea Embankment[1883]

Frederick Brown - Impromptu Dance, a Scene on the Chelsea Embankment [1883], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Frederick Brown was born in Chelmsford in 1851. From 1868-1877 he studied at the National Art Training School (later the Royal College of Art), where he grew to resent the mechanical teaching methods then prevalent in Britain. He subsequently became a successful art teacher himself, first at the Westminster School of Art (1877-92) and later at the Slade in direct succession to Alphonse Legros, from 1893-1918. Much inspired by Legros’ reforms at the Slade, Brown encouraged his students to develop their own individual style. It is hardly surprising that Brown should have become a founder of the New English Art Club in 1886, and author of its constitution, establishing a group of discontented artists who favoured the naturalism and spontaneity of plein-air painting over the conservatism of the Royal Academy in particular and the Academic tradition in general and which included such luminaries as Harold Gilman, Roger Fry, William Rothenstein, John Lavery, Water Sickert, Philip Wilson Steer and John Singer Sargent among its members.

[Bonhams, sold for £162,400 including premium - Oil on canvas, 106 x 153 cm]