Charles Francis Browne, “A Summer Day in France,” Oil on Canvas, c. Early 20th Century

Photograph of a painting.

Poplar trees surround a small cottage that sits in the right foreground of the scene. Their leaves grow in clumps up spindly trunks, and are suggestive of topiary. Behind these sit a mass of fuller trees. A field, or clearing, sits low on the near foreground of the canvas. More trees fill out the left side of the composition. The more distant trees have distinctly round shapes, while a few that are nearer exhibit the topiary pattern of foliage. Vegetation-covered hills sit in the background. The sky is distinctive for its thick cloud cover; a few rippled streaks of sky are visible through a very large, solid mass of clouds. The overall color scheme in this painting is an atmospheric, muted-green.

20 1/4 x 28 1/4″

(1859-1920)

One of the original members of the Eagle’s Nest Art Colony, Browne was its premier landscape artist. Browne studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and then was a student of Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Afterward, he pursued further studies in Paris. In 1890 he moved to Chicago. There, he taught painting and lectured on art history at the Art Institue. Browne served as president of the Chicago Society of Artists and director of the Western Society of Artists.

Browne was married to one of Lorado Taft’s sisters and was the father of the child born at the Eagle’s Nest Art Colony. The couple divorced in 1908. During the summer of 1919, while at the Eagle’s Nest Camp, Browne was stricken with paralysis. He spent the autumn near Chicago, then went back to his mother’s home in Waltham, Massachusetts, where he died the following March.

Another one of his Ogle County landscapes, “Moonlight, Oregon, Illinois,” belongs to the Union League Club of Chicago.