Born in March 1866, Sir John Arnesby Brown studied at Nottingham School of Art under the landscape artist Andrew MacCallum, where he learnt about the observation of nature and subtle effects of light and colour. Between 1889 and 1892 he studied at Hubert von Herkomer's Bushey School of Art in Hertfordshire. He later joined the colony of artists living and working in St Ives. There, he began to paint outdoors. From 1890 Arnesby Brown began exhibiting works at the Royal Academy and the Tate Gallery in London, as well as in the galleries of Nottingham, Liverpool and Cape Town. He was elected a member of the Royal Academy in 1915 and spent the years following this alternating between Haddiscoe in Norfolk and St. Ives in Cornwall, before taking a house in Chelsea. Popular for his atmospheric treatment of sea and coastal subjects with brooding skies, he helped bring St Ives landscape and marine painting to national prominence, being made one of the first honorary members of STISA in the 1930s. In 1935 Norwich Castle Museum held a retrospective of his work and in 1938 he received a knighthood. Arnesby Brown is particularly celebrated for his Norfolk and Suffolk landscape paintings and pastoral subjects which he depicts with a timeless naturalism. After 1905, he also began to paint the industrial landscape and was particularly interested in the rail yards and brickworks in the region around Kings Lynn. Much of his work has been placed in prestigious public collections such as The Royal Academy and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. He was a Royal Academician who deliberately resisted Modernist influences. He was married to the artist, Mia Edwards (see separately under Mia Arnesby BROWN), who predeceased him. He died in Haddiscoe, Norfolk, his alternative home to that in St Ives for many years.
Produced artwork for LMS Posters series.
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