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Brown, Bob (1893–1954)

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Louise and Bob Brown

Louise and Bob Brown’s passport photo, 1923. From US Passport Applications, 1795–1925. (M1490) Passport Applications, January 2, 1906–March 31, 1925. Roll 2166, 1923 January, certificate no 243600-243975.

Robert Aaron Brown was a prolific St. Paul painter, mostly of watercolors, whose productive years were roughly 1930 to 1950. His works appeared in dozens of exhibits, including solo shows at the Walker Art Center and the St. Paul Public Library. He painted city scenes (chiefly in St. Paul) and landscapes of the St. Croix and Upper Mississippi valleys.

Born and reared in Berlin, Wisconsin, by 1915 Brown had moved to St. Paul and found work as a commercial artist. He served briefly in the US Army during World War I, stationed in Iowa. In 1918 he married Louise Driese of St. Paul, also a commercial artist. The couple toured Europe in the early 1920s, and around that time Brown also studied at the Art Students League in New York City. He and Louise moved in 1930 to Greenwich Village, where Brown failed to make a living as a painter.

Back in St. Paul, Brown left his wife and took up with writer Meridel Le Sueur, with whom he lived on occasion, and to whom he remained devoted the rest of his life. His letters to her display both an unquenchable passion and an imaginative use of the English language. “I’d rather be 100% assembled—alert, than rich.” “A word, just slight, is so reassuring of rhythmic ventricle in your excellent turbine.” “The outside caress of the world up and over.” He had three passions: his art, Meridel Le Sueur, and the bottle. Alcoholism sometimes drove him to despair: “Tomb is still, jug is empty, follow’d hallucination in 2 oblivion & nothing but black remorse.”

With contemporaries Stanford Fennelle, Clement Haupers, and others, he participated in the Minnesota “regionalist” style of painting promoted by the New Deal’s Federal Art Project (FAP). In 1936 one Bob Brown painting appeared in the New Horizons in American Art exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He had solo shows at the Walker Art Center in 1940, and the St. Paul Public Library in 1941. Local art critics reviewed these shows favorably. John Sherman in the Minneapolis Star Journal wrote that Brown’s work “provides adventure and stimulation,” and that “Bob Brown has a muscular art that has few pictorial cliches.” James Gray of the St. Paul Dispatch found “freshness of insight” and “flashing brilliance of technique.” The Walker Art Center displayed his works in group shows in 1943, 1944, and 1949. He painted large works in support of the Minnesota war effort in the 1940s, and had several works on display at the Minnesota State Sanatorium for Consumptives (Ah-Gwah-Ching) in Walker.

Employment by FAP was probably the only steady work Brown had in his adult life. He lived alone in St. Paul’s old Seven Corners neighborhood, patronized the bars, and painted. By the early 1950s he was a well-known street character who sometimes traded paintings for drinks.

Brown died of a heart attack while on a walk in his neighborhood, in June 1954. His wife, Louise, whom he never divorced, had him buried at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. She died in 1963. In 1965 the Saint Paul Art Center held a retrospective show of his work.

Brown’s works disappeared from view for the next twenty years. Local banks held hundreds as collateral for unpaid loans, until a federal bankruptcy court determined ownership. In the mid-1980s Walter Bush, founder of the Minnesota North Stars hockey team, bought the collection, then placed it in storage again for another twenty years. Most of those works have since been sold to private buyers; some (seventy pieces) were donated to the Minnesota Historical Society, which holds the biggest known collection of his work. No one knows how many works Brown produced or where they all are. Museums around the country, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) in Minneapolis, hold a handful.

In 2022 Meridel LeSueur’s daughter, Deborah LeSueur, donated photographic images of nearly 300 Bob Brown works to the Ramsey County Historical Society.

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Nelson, Paul. “Bob Brown: Paint What You See.” Ramsey County History 56, no. 2 (Summer 2022): 14–26.
https://publishing.rchs.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/RCHS_Summer-2022_P-Nelson.pdf

Towne, Oliver. "St. Paul Painter's Works Rediscovered." St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 24, 1985.

Related Images

Louise and Bob Brown
Louise and Bob Brown
Untitled landscape
Untitled landscape
"Swede Hollow"
"Swede Hollow"
"The Other Side of the Tracks (Swede Hollow)"
"The Other Side of the Tracks (Swede Hollow)"
Black and white photograph of Meridel Le Sueur, c. 1940.
Black and white photograph of Meridel Le Sueur, c. 1940.
Black and white photograph of a Federal Art Project, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1940.
Black and white photograph of a Federal Art Project, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1940.

Turning Point

The Federal Art Project (FPA) hires Brown in the 1930s, giving him a steady income for the first and only time in his life.

Chronology

1893

Brown is born in Berlin, Wisconsin, a village in the Fox River valley.

1915

Brown works as a commercial artist in St. Paul.

1918

The US Army discharges Brown, and he marries Louise Driese of St. Paul.

1919–1923

Brown tours Europe and studies art in New York City.

1928

Brown wins first prize in watercolors at a Women’s Club of Minneapolis art show.

1930–1931

Brown moves to Greenwich Village and tries to make an art career in New York. He fails and returns to St. Paul.

early 1930s

Brown meets Meridel LeSueur and separates from Louise.

1936

One of Brown’s paintings appears in the New Horizons in American Art exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Brown is employed by the Federal Art Project in St. Paul.

1940

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis mounts Brown’s first one-man show. It follows up by displaying Brown works in group shows shown in 1943, 1944, and 1949.

1941

The St. Paul Public Library mounts a solo show of Brown’s work.

1954

Brown dies of a heart attack on June 19. He is buried at Fort Snelling National Cemetery.

1963

Louise Brown dies in St. Paul.

1965

The St. Paul Art Center mounts a Bob Brown retrospective.

1985

Oak Park Heights State Bank retrieves some 300 Bob Brown works from storage and displays them. Walter Bush buys the collection, stores it, and eventually sells most of it to private buyers. He donates some to the Minnesota Historical Society.

1996

Meridel LeSueur dies. Her papers, including over 300 letters from Bob Brown, are donated to the Minnesota Historical Society.

2022

Deborah LeSueur donates nearly 300 photographic images of Bob Brown works to the Ramsey County Historical Society.