A NATIVE of Edinburgh, born about 1850, Mr. A. K. Brown
was brought to Glasgow at the age of three, and was educated at Glasgow Normal
School. There he took several prizes for drawing, and afterwards as he grew up
he attended classes at Glasgow School of art. He served an apprenticeship in the
designing department of Messrs. Inglis & Wakefield, calico printers, Glasgow, an
occupation which added fuel to his long cherished desire to be a painter. To
this end during his spare hours he painted constantly from nature, and drew and
painted assiduously at the School of Art. By this means, when his apprenticeship
was finished, he definitely adopted the painter's profession. Landscape is his
forte, and the quieter aspects of nature are his favourite subjects. A German
critic has described his work as "a loving depiction of the most delicate
atmospheric tones, in which nothing sinks into indistinctness, in which the
tiniest leaf stands out and yet blends poetically with the tone of the whole
picture." He has travelled and painted abroad, but prefers his native country as
a painting ground. His pictures have been favourably received in such
continental exhibitions as the New Salon in Paris, Munich, Berlin, Vienna,
Venice, Dresden, Prague, and Budapest, as well as in America (Boston, Chicago,
Pittsburg, and St. Louis). At Munich his painting, "The Gareloch," gained a gold
medal, and was bought by the Bavarian Government for its National Gallery.
Several other of his pictures are in municipal galleries in Germany, and he is
represented in the Glasgow art Galleries by his "Springtime."
Mr. Brown is one of the original members of the Royal
Scottish Society of Painters in Water Colours, and was honorary treasurer of
that body for a number of years. In 1892 he was elected an Associate of the
Royal Scottish Academy, and became an R.S.A. in 1908. He has also been a
President of the Glasgow Art Club and a Member of Council of the Royal Glasgow
Institute of the Fine arts, and he had a considerable share in founding, in
1889, the Scottish Artists' Benevolent Association, of which he is one of the
honorary secretaries.
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Index of Glasgow Men (1909)