Alfred Joseph Warne BROWNE

Alfred Joseph Warne BROWNE RSO
Warne Browne
1855
1915
c1855 (birth)

Born in Warminster, Wiltshire, the artist was a London-based painter (address in Swiss Cottage) until the 1891 Census, when he and his wife, Edith Clara, were living in the parish of St Uny, Lelant, near St Ives.

His painting for the 1890 exhibition at Dowdeswells, which was entitled November Weather-St Ives, indicates that they had moved to Cornwall some time earlier. His daughter Constance Mabel, 3 years old at that time, had been born in Berlin, an Overseas British subject.

Warne Browne exhibited at Newlyn from the opening exhibition in 1895, his paintings always proving popular. A major sale he achieved at NAG was of seven sketches on sea subjects in 1899. By 1901 he and his wife and three daughters had moved to live in Ruan Minor, the address he gave for exhibition purposes.  He was a member of the NSA. Although he exhibited at the Royal Academy, he did not achieve the recognition he deserved in the UK. However, his seascapes were sought after by Americans.

Tovey has found an image of Pilchard Fishing with the Seine Net, reproduced in 1901 in The Sphere, which was simultaneously showing at an exhibition at the St James Gallery in London. This scene shows a large group of fisherman working their large seine net, possibly off the coast of St Ives, though the location is indeterminate.

In 1905 he exhibited two paintings at NAG, which were both sold to a Liverpool buyer, Winter Weather and Lizard Coast; and Kynance two years later. In 1913 he resided at Lower Shiplake, Oxon.

Upon his death in Ruan Minor from a stroke in 1915, the artist was described in the Helston Advertiser and the West Briton as 'a true Bohemian, with a highly developed artistic temperament. Mr Warne Browne loved the sea, and painted it with a sincerity and fidelity which ought to have secured for him a higher place in the world of art'.

media

Painter of marine subjects

works and access

Works include: Cornish Wreckers (1892); Tucking Pilchards (1896); Moonlight in Mounts Bay (1896); The Cornish Sea (1896); Sunlight (1897); Evening at Kennack & Morning Tide (1897); Samson; Isles of Scilly; A Corner of Kynance and Summer Morning (1898); Pilchard Fishing with the Seine Net (1901); Winter Weather; Lizard Coast; Kynance (1907)

Access to work: Aberdeen; Birmingham; Bristol; Fitzwilliam, Cambridge; Falmouth; Guildhall, London; Harrogate; Huddersfield; Hull; Liverpool; Manchester; Newcastle; Norwich Castle; Nottingham; Port Sunlight; Preston; QMDH; Southport; Tate; National Railway Museum, York

Adelaide; Auckland; Brisbane; Cape Town; Christchurch; Dunedin; Mildura; Sydney; Timaru; Wellington; Wanganui

exhibitions

RA (14); NWS (5)

RI (1894)

NAG 1895, July - October 1896; 1896-99; 1905; 1907

Dowdeswell 1890

St James's Gallery, London 1901

Whitechapel 1902

memberships

NSA

RSO

misc further info

Correspondence with D Tovey (July, 2011)

references

Census 1891, 1901

Dowdeswell Exhibition catalogue (repr Hardie 2009)

Graves British Artists 1880-1940

Hardie (1995) 100 Years in Newlyn: Diary of a Gallery

Hardie (2009) Artists in Newlyn and West Cornwall;

NAG exhibition records

The Sphere, 1901 issue, p244: reprint of 'Pilchard Fishing with the Seine Net'

Tovey (2009) St Ives: Social History

Whitechapel Exhibition Catalogue (repr Hardie 2009)

C Wood (1995, 2008) Victorian Painters

The Year's Art;