BROWN, FORD MADOX (1821-1893), English painter, was born at Calais on April 16, 1821, the son of Ford Brown, and his wife Caroline Madox. His grandfather was Dr. John Brown of the Brunonian theory of medicine. He received his artistic training from Gregorius, a pupil of David, at Bruges, and from Wappers, at Antwerp. In 1840 he exhibited at the Academy "The Giaour's Confession," the subject of which was drawn from Byron. The first picture he painted of ter his return to London in 1846, "Lear and Cordelia," shows his individual char acteristics. He was concerned with "truth of colour, of spiritual expression, and of historical character." Writing of the effect produced by "Lear and Cordelia" Richard Muther says : "It stood in such abrupt opposition to the traditional historical painting that perhaps nothing was ever so sharply opposed to anything so universally accepted. The figures stand out stiff and parti coloured like card kings, without fluency of line or rounded and generalized beauty. And the colour is just as incoherent. The brown sauce, which every one had hitherto respected like a bind ing social law, had given way to a bright joy of colour, the half barbaric motley which one finds in old miniatures." On closer examination it was clear that every detail was conceived as part of a whole, and that the picture was a great work of tragic art, in which nothing was sacrificed to empty show or to pose. This character of sincerity was Madox Brown's great contribution to contemporary art. He was closely allied with the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and especially with Dante Ga briel Rossetti. He never actually joined the brotherhood, but his works followed its principles very closely : instances are "Christ washing St. Peter's Feet" and "Work," a street scene at Hamp stead.
Brown completed a number of historical pictures between 185o and 1877, but he was a slow worker, and not all of his time was given to easel pictures. He was a member of the firm of art decorators, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, and pro duced a great number of designs for stained glass. From 1878 on wards he was engrossed by the decoration of the City hall at Manchester—twelve large wall paintings, some of them done in a modified form of the Gambier-Parry process, and others in oil on canvas applied to the wall surface. These present the history of Manchester and the district, from the building of the Roman camp at Mancunium to the experimental work of Dalton in elab orating the atomic theory. Among his best works, "Christ wash ing St. Peter's Feet" is in the Tate Gallery, London, "The Last of England," is at Birmingham, and the "Expulsion of the Danes from Manchester," and "Work," an original cartoon for a fresco, are in the Manchester Art gallery.
Brown died in London on Oct. 6, 1893. He was twice married -in 1841 to his cousin, Elizabeth Bromley, who died in 1846, leaving a daughter, Lucy, who became the wife of William M. Rossetti ; and to Emma Hill, who served as model for many of his figures.
See a life of the artist written by his grandson, Ford M. Hueffer (afterwards Ford Madox Ford), Ford Madox Brown (1896). This volume contains some extracts from Brown's diary, extending in the whole from 1847 to 1865 ; and other lengthier extracts appear in two books ed. by William M. Rossetti-Ruskin, Rossetti, Pre-Raphaelitism (1899) and Pre-Raphaelite Diaries and Letters (i899). See also the Preferences in Art, etc., by Harry Quilter (1892) , and a pamphlet, Ford Madox Brown (1901) , by Helen Rossetti (Angeli) .