SOLD The Gulf of Monaco, 1867

One of the most celebrated expatriate American artists, George Loring Brown is known for his Claudian landscape paintings. Born in Boston in 1814, Brown got his start as a wood engraver, apprenticing with illustrators Abel Brown (1790–1850) and Alonzo Hartwell (1805–1873). Brown’s illustration and printmaking skills quickly progressed and he soon expanded to painting at a friend’s encouragement. In 1832, he sold his first painting for a sizable sum to a serious Boston collector. The proceeds from the painting, said to be around $50, afforded Brown passage to Paris, where he studied for several years with French Romanticist Eugene Isabey