Daniel Price Erichsen Brown (1939), painter and printmaker, found his calling on frequent childhood sketching trips with Group of Seven painters A.Y. Jackson and F.H. Varley, friends of his grandfather, around the family cottage on Georgian Bay.
DP Brown ‘s father was in the Canadian consular corps, which took the family to Brussels. Brown studied at Erde international boarding school in The Netherlands and was able to visit many of the art museums in Europe.
Brown developed a deep admiration for the unpretentious and sometimes humorous approach of Flemish and Dutch painting – influences visible in many of his works.
In 1958, he was encouraged by Lawren Harris to return to Canada to study at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick with Alex Colville (both artists ultimately giants of the Group of Seven).
After graduating in 1961 Brown moved back to Ontario to paint full-time and lived there until the 1990s, moved to Brussels and then recently returned to Canada.
By the late 70’s, an exhibition at Fischer Fine Art in London, England confirmed his status as one of the new leading high realist painters in Canada, says Loch Gallery in Toronto, which represents him.
Brown paints exclusively with egg tempera. His subject matter often is the rural surroundings he clearly enjoys capturing with photographic accuracy. But there is also often a larger social commentary purpose, in the tradition of those classical and Renaissance masters he admires.
At Loch Gallery, which represents him, here.
A monograph on DP Brown, here.
Painting at top of post: Broken Vase, 2006, Tempera on Panel, 14.5 x 20 in.
This is No. 67 in 150 Artists, an ongoing series on Canadian artists you should know.
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I like the pool and its compressed telephoto perspective. The tempera colours put me in mind of Tooker, though clearly different subject matter.
Good call, thank you, the smiliarity to George Tooker, especially the colours, as you say. For anyone else interested in who this artist is, and why it’s similar, here’s a link to my own favourite Tooker work and an explainer via the Whitney Museum of Modern Art https://whitney.org/collection/works/3052
These are very cool, especially that last one (he wrote while sitting alone at his computer lol)!
Love it, thanks for weighing in.
A clever, sly-boots commentary in Time With Friends!
Yep, you got it! I loved that.