Event Title
John George Brown's The Deacon’s Visit: A Sentimentality for the Past
Faculty Mentor
Elissa Auerbach
Keywords
Elissa Auerbach
Abstract
John George Brown’s painting The Deacon’s Visit, 1881, depicts an elderly couple in a scene about self-reliance and days gone by. During Gilded Age, the American economy shifted from agriculture to industry and urban development. Beginning in 1880, as an established artist, Brown often painted genre scenes of elderly people living in country towns near New York City. His Paintings, such as The Deacon’s Visit, present a nostalgic narrative of a simpler way of life, a longing for the past. The paintings showcase the lives led by older people living in the county before the advent of a mechanized way of life. Scholars have argued that Brown’s motives for painting the elderly in the last part of his career were purely financial, due to the increase in popularity of this theme in 1876. In this paper I will posit that Brown uses his paintings of the elderly as a commentary on the decline of a hands-on and interactive era before the Gilded Age.
Session Name:
Gods, Saints, and a Longing for the Past in the Arts
Start Date
4-4-2014 1:15 PM
End Date
4-4-2014 2:15 PM
Location
HSB 304
John George Brown's The Deacon’s Visit: A Sentimentality for the Past
HSB 304
John George Brown’s painting The Deacon’s Visit, 1881, depicts an elderly couple in a scene about self-reliance and days gone by. During Gilded Age, the American economy shifted from agriculture to industry and urban development. Beginning in 1880, as an established artist, Brown often painted genre scenes of elderly people living in country towns near New York City. His Paintings, such as The Deacon’s Visit, present a nostalgic narrative of a simpler way of life, a longing for the past. The paintings showcase the lives led by older people living in the county before the advent of a mechanized way of life. Scholars have argued that Brown’s motives for painting the elderly in the last part of his career were purely financial, due to the increase in popularity of this theme in 1876. In this paper I will posit that Brown uses his paintings of the elderly as a commentary on the decline of a hands-on and interactive era before the Gilded Age.