ARTIST: Jennie Augusta Brownscombe (New York, 1850 - 1936)
NAME: Blue Bird
MEDIUM: oil on canvas
CONDITION: Very good. One 1" long scratch. No visible inpaint under UV light.
SIGHT SIZE: 30 x 22 1/2 inches / 70 x 56 cm
FRAME SIZE: unframed
SIGNATURE: Lower left
CATEGORY: antique vintage painting
SKU#: 116090
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Jennie Augusta Brownscombe (New York, 1850 - 1936)
Jennie Augusta Brownscombe was born on Dec. 10th 1850 in a log cabin near Honesdale, PA. the only daughter of William and Elvira (Kennedy) Brownscombe. She began to draw pictures as a child and while in grade school she exhibited paintings at the Wayne Country Fair, where they won ribbons. After her father's death she went to the Cooper Institute (later Cooper Union) School of Design, where she studied under Victor Nehlig. She later took classes at the National Academy of Design with Lemuel E. Wilmarth and at the Art Students League in NYC. She went abroad to study with Henry Mosler, an American genre painter working in Brittany. An eye injury suffered soon after her return to the states in 1883 kept her from painting for a year. She was a specialist in genre scenes of early American history and this is what she became best known for.
Her association with genre and still-life painter George Henry Hall is credited to have improved her style and color technique. Under his tutelage her craftsmanship improved and she developed the more mature style she is known for today. She became very popular with magazines, calendar firms and publishers of prints who began to seek her out, and such pictures as "Loves Young Dream" and "Sunday Morning in Sleepy Hollow" were widely reproduced in photogravures, etchings and engravings, over one hundred prints were copyrighted.
It was during the 1890's, influenced by childhood stories and a revival of interest in America's past that she turned to historical subjects. Paintings with themes such as The Peace Ball. Washington introducing Rochambeau and Lafayette to his mother after the Yorktown victory and The First American Thanksgiving would occupy her for her entire career. During the twenties she painted several portraits to supplement her modest income. A working artist until the end of her life, at the age of seventy-six despite a stroke, she painted Children Playing in an Orchard for the Lincoln School in Honesdale, PA.
Brownscombe was a member of the National Arts Club and the New York Municipal Art Society, as well as the American Scenic and Historical Preservation Society, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the May Flower Descendants.
Her works were exhibited at the Art Students League, the Royal Academy, Rome Watercolor Society; she also exhibited in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. She lived simply with no companion or servant. At the age of eighty-five she died in New York City of atrophy of the brain with cardiac complications. She was buried beside her parents in Glen Dyberry Cemetery, Honesdale.