Brown, FORD MADOX, historical painter, one of the most intellectual, forcible, and unconventional artists of our time, grandson of the founder of the Brunonian system of medicine, was born at Calais in 1821. His earlier studies were conducted mainly at Antwerp, under Baron Wappers, who, in his turn, had been influenced by the Romantic school of France; and, after a brief period spent in portrait-painting in England, he resided for three years in Paris, where he produced his 'Manfred on the Jungfrau' (1841), and 'Parisisa's Sleep' (1842), works intensely dramatic in feeling, but sombre in colouring. In 1844-45 he contributed three subjects to the Westminster cartoon competitions, preliminary to the mural decoration of the Houses of Parliament, works praised by Haydon, though they gained no prize; and one of them was carried out in 1861 as an oil-picture, titled 'Wilhelmus Conquistator,' one of the most dignified and monumental of the artist's productions. A visit to Italy about 1845 led him to seek greater variety and richness of colouring, and its results were seen in 'Wyclif reading his Translation of the Scriptures to John of Gaunt' (1848), and 'Chaucer reciting his Poetry at the Court of Edward III.' (1851). Already his art had been developing new aims, which demanded fresh methods for their expression; and gradually he formed a style characterised by great originality, force, and directness, much in harmony with that of the Pre-Raphaelites, and, in point of time, anticipating their efforts. In 1850 he was a contributor of verse, prose, and design to the Pre-Raphaelite magazine the Germ, and in his youth Rossetti worked in his studio. Among the most important works in his fully developed manner are 'Cordelia and Lear,' 'Christ washing Peter's Feet,' 'Work,' 'The Last of England,' 'Romeo and Juliet,' 'The Entombment,' 'Cromwell dictating the Vaudois Despatch to Milton,' and, in landscape, the 'English Summer Afternoon.' In 1865 he held an exhibition of his collected works in London, the interesting and valuable descriptive catalogue of which was written by himself. He was known to some extent as a book-illustrator, and among his designs for stained glass are the windows of St Oswald's, Durham. From 1879 till a few months before his death—which took place on the 6th October 1893—he was engaged upon a great series of twelve subjects from local history for the town-hall of Manchester. They are executed by the Gambier-Parry process, the earlier works being painted directly upon the prepared surface of the walls, and some of the later upon canvas.—His son, OLIVER MADOX BROWN, author and artist, was born at Finchley, 20th January 1855. At the age of twelve he executed a water-colour subject—'Margaret of Anjou and the Robber'—of very considerable merit; two years later his 'Chiron' was shown at the Dudley Exhibition; in 1870 his equestrian 'Exercise' found a place on the line in the Royal Academy; and already two of his designs, 'The Deformed Transformed' and 'Mazeppa,' had been engraved. In 1871-72 he wrote his first novel, published in an altered and mutilated form in 1873, under the title of Gabriel Denver, and reprinted in original form and under its first title of The Black Swan in his Literary Remains (1876). As the work of a lad under seventeen, it is a marvellous production. The tales of The Dwalc Bluth and Hebditch's Legacy, with some minor narrative pieces, were left incomplete at the time of their author's death. As a poet he was no less precocious. At the age of fourteen he had written several remarkable sonnets; and from time to time he produced lyrics and other fragments in which the dominant note is that same passionate intensity which is the main characteristic of his fiction. His promising career was cut short; he died of blood-poisoning on the 5th November 1874.
See a life of the father by Ford Madox Hueffer (1893), and of the son by J. H. Ingram (1883).