Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/361

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Brown
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Brown

was secured for the South London Art Gallery, and a number of designs, which are chiefly decorative, were bought and distributed among the art schools of England.

Late in his life Brown had a full share of domestic troubles. In November 1874 his mind and heart were convulsed by the death of his son Oliver, a youth upon whose future he had founded ambitious and splendid hopes [see Brown, Oliver Madox]. His friend Rossetti died on 9 April 1882, and in October 1890 Mrs. Madox Brown, the painter's second wife. It was then manifest to his friends that his own powers were failing. But he lived until 6 Oct. 1893; five days later he was buried in the cemetery at Finchley, where the remains of his second wife and son were already laid. He was, except perhaps Millais, the most English of the English artists of his time.

Brown married his second wife, Emma Hill, the daughter of a Herefordshire farmer, in 1848; she was only fifteen at the time, and her mother's opposition to the marriage led to an elopement. Brown's elder daughter, Lucy, married Mr. William M. Rossetti, the younger brother of the artist [see Rossetti, Lucy Madox]; his younger daughter, Catherine, married Franz (or Francis) Hueffer [q. v.], and their son, Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, published in 1896 a biography of the painter, his grandfather.

Besides the portrait of himself which Brown introduced into his 'The Last of England' (now at the Birmingham Art Gallery), there is a second portrait by him, of himself, which was exhibited in the New Gallery, London, in 1900; a reproduction is given in Mr. F. M. Hueffer's 'Memoir.' Several of his pictures, including 'The Last of England,' 'Work,' 'Sardanapalus,' 'Elijah and the Widow's Son,' 'Cordelia,' and 'Christ washing Peter's Feet,' have been engraved.

[Personal knowledge; Memoir of Madox Brown by his grandson. Mr. F. M. Hueffer (1896); two articles in the 'Portfolio' (1893) by the present writer, which were seen in proof and approved by Madox Brown.]

F. G. S.

BROWN, GEORGE (1818–1880), Canadian politician, was born at Edinburgh on 29 Nov. 1818.

His father, Peter Brown (1784–1863), Canadian journalist, born in Scotland on 29 June 1784, was an Edinburgh merchant. Encountering reverses he emigrated to New York in 1838, where in December 1842 he founded the 'British Chronicle,' a weekly newspaper especially intended for Scottish emigrants. Being unable to compete with the 'Albion,' which represented general British interests, it was removed to Toronto in 1843, and rechristened 'The Banner,' becoming the peculiar organ of the Free Church of Scotland in Canada. While in New York Brown published, under the pseudonym 'Libertas,' a reply to Charles Edward Lester's 'Glory and Shame of England' (1842), entitled 'The Fame and Glory of England Vindicated.' He died at Toronto on 30 June 1863. He married the only daughter of George Mackenzie of Stornoway in the Lewis.

His son was educated at the Edinburgh High School and at the Southern Academy, He accompanied his father to New York in 1838, and became publisher and business manager of the 'British Chronicle.' During a visit to Toronto in this capacity his ability attracted the attention of the leaders of the reform party in Canada, and negotiations were commenced which terminated in the removal of himself and his father to that town. Almost immediately after his arrival he founded the 'Globe' at the instance of the reform party. This political journal, originally published weekly, soon became one of the leading Canadian papers. In 1853 it became a daily paper. During Brown's lifetime it was distinguished by its vigorous invective and its personal attacks on political opponents. Brown strongly supported the reform party in their struggle with Sir Charles Theophilus Metcalfe (afterwards Baron Metcalfe) [q. v.] on the question of responsible government [see art. Baldwin, Robert, in Suppl.] In 1851, however, he severed himself from his party, which was then in power under the Baldwin-Lafontaine ministry, on the question of papal aggression in England and elsewhere. He identified himself with protestant opinions, and in December 1851 was returned to the Canadian legislative assembly for the county of Kent. He established himself as the leader of an extreme section of the radicals, whom he had formerly denounced, and whose sobriquet, the 'Clear Grits,' he had himself ironically given in the columns of the 'Globe.' At the election of 1854 he was returned for Lambton county, and in 1857 for Toronto. On 31 July 1858, on the defeat of Sir John Alexander Macdonald [q. v.], he undertook to form a ministry. He succeeded in patching up a heterogeneous cabinet, known as the Brown-Dorion administration, but it held office only for four days, resigning on the refusal of the governor-general, Sir Edmund Walker Head [q. v.], to dissolve parliament. His failure did his party a serious injury, and in 1861 he was unseated. In March 1863, however, he returned to the assembly as member for South