Biography for Ford Madox Brown

Employment

Brown studied first in Antwerp and Paris before coming to England in 1844. The following year he went to Rome where he encountered several of the German artists of the Nazarene school, and this fostered his interest in mediaevalism. A year later, back in England, he met Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) who became his student for a short time and the two became friends. Brown might have become a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which Rossetti and others founded in London in 1848, but he always remained on the fringe of the movement. He painted, in a realistic and intense style, works that dealt with modern life and contemporary social issues. His two masterpieces are The Last of England (1852-1856), (Birmingham) which was concerned with emigration from England, and Work (1852-1865) (Manchester).