Deborah Brown (1927 – 2023) – The Harper, 1952/53
A timed auction of the Deborah Brown collection will be held at Adams in Dublin on October 1. Deborah Brown was an artist of international repute mostly unheard of in her own country even though her work was regularly included in survey exhibitions of contemporary Irish art, including a number of major touring exhibitions and at ROSC. A 1982 retrospective exhibition was shown at the Ulster Museum and in Dublin at the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art and there was a retrospective at the F.E. McWilliam Gallery in Banbridge in 2012/13.
The sale is a fascinating collection of works by artist friends and contemporaries, those who particularly influenced her career and the studio collection of Deborah’s own work. There is art by James Humbert Craig; Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone, Alice Berger Hammerschlag, T.P. Flanagan, William Scott and Basil Blackshaw.
After studying at Belfast College of Art and the NCAD in Dublin Deborah Brown moved to Paris in
1950. Experiences of modern French painting transformed her work. In 1951 she was invited to hold a one-person exhibition in Belfast, with a subsequent exhibition organised in Glasgow in 1955 by the British Council. This in-turn led to her 1956 solo exhibition at the Ulster Museum. In 1953, Deborah Brown began to exhibit with Victor Waddington in Dublin and the Mayfair Gallery in London in 1954. She exhibited with the Ulster Academy of Arts between 1946 and 1976 and the Society of Women Artists in London, the Women’s International Art Club and the Ulster Society of Women Artists. In the late 1950s, Deborah Brown’s work became completely abstract and she exhibited increasingly outside Ireland at the New Vision Centre Gallery, in London, the Free Painters Group and at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol. The catalogue for the sale is online.