Charles Francis Browne, “Landscape,” Oil on Canvas, c. 1916

Painting

A yellow-leafed tree sits just to the left of center in this painting. It sits on a hill, and behind it grow a handful of nearly bare saplings and a smattering of evergreen trees. Brushwood and fallen branches with brown and orange foliage dot the foreground grass on the surrounding hillside. A triangle of river is visible on the right. There is a valley beyond and tree-covered hills in the distance. The sky is pale blue and filled with clouds.

20 x 28″

(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.