Sold at Auction: John George Brown

Artist John George Brown (1831-1913) was an American Victorian-era painter, etcher, and lithographer. He is best known for his stylized, sentimental genre oils on canvas of entrepreneurial street urchins, most notably boys who shined shoes, sold newspapers, and played music. John George Brown's paintings also include rosy-cheeked girls at play.

As an artist, John George Brown was wildly popular with the public because he idealized the cheery, impish, robust street boys; these were the days before Jacob Riis' photographic revelations about New York's slums. John George Brown's prints of picturesque youths sold in the thousands. With his commercial success, Brown went on to paint landscapes that were much more colorful, crisp, and detailed than his genre art. Collect sets of classic genre paintings for sale by perusing offerings at online galleries.