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Lot 127
George Browne(1918-1958)Spring on a Northern Lake
26 September – 7 October 2025, 12:00 EDT
Skinner Marlborough, MassachusettsSold for US$15,360 inc. premium
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Jelena James
Senior Specialist, Head of Sale
Claire Dettelbach
Cataloguer
Jewel Bernier
Cataloguer
George Browne (1918-1958)
Spring on a Northern Lake
signed 'George Browne' (lower right); identified on a presentation plaque and on a typed label (affixed to the reverse)
oil on canvas in a signed Carrig-Rohane frame
30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
Painted in 1949.
signed 'George Browne' (lower right); identified on a presentation plaque and on a typed label (affixed to the reverse)
oil on canvas in a signed Carrig-Rohane frame
30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
Painted in 1949.
Footnotes
Provenance
By descent in the present private Massachusetts collection.
N.B.
George Browne was one of the most important American wildlife painters. He was born in New York City and spent his childhood in Tacoma, Washington, and Banff, Alberta. He was the son of well-known artist and outdoorsman Belmore Browne and grew up surrounded by sport, nature, and art, both through his father and through fellow Banff painter Carl Rungius, with whom his family spent time. Browne was determined to be a painter from a young age and was encouraged to do so by his father, despite having lost sight in one eye after a gun accident. He studied at the California School of Fine Arts and collaborated with his father painting diorama backgrounds at New York's American Museum of Natural History before pursuing his own professional career in 1946.
In 1947 Browne received his first official commission and was enlisted as the official artist on an expedition to climb Denali sponsored by the Boston Academy of Science. He quickly developed a reputation as a skilled nature painter hereafter, particularly of game birds and their habitats. By 1954 Browne had participated in numerous gallery shows and moved from California to Connecticut to better observe and paint the waterfowl and game of New England, one of his favorite subjects. Just four years later, at age 40, Browne was tragically killed during a hunting accident while on a target-shooting expedition in the Adirondacks.
The present work dates to early in Browne's career. It epitomizes Browne's skill as a painter of habitat, first learned from his father painting museum diorama backgrounds, recalling the way in which the animals in dioramas are thoughtfully yet effortlessly integrated into their created habitat. The painting evokes the sounds, smells, and sights of early spring in the north as group of Canada geese, just arriving from the south, make their way across the newly thawing lake.