Oil on linen, 1987. 2090x3658 mm; 82¼x144 inches. Signed, titled, dated and annotated in oil, lower right verso. With the artist's adhesive label lower left verso.
Exhibited: "Frederick Brown Paintings 1986-1987," Marlborough Gallery, New York, September 16-October 10, 1987 (illustrated); "A Retrospective (A One Man Exhibition of the Work of Frederick J. Brown)," Beijing National Museum of Chinese Revolution, June 1-21, 1988; "Frederick J. Brown, Portraits in Jazz, Blues and Other Icons," Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, June 15-August 31, 2002; New Orleans Museum of Art, February 1-March 31, 2003; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, April 23-June 29, 2003.
Published: Sims, Frederick J. Brown, Portraits in Jazz, Blues and Other Icons, New York, 2002 (illustrated); Johnson, "An Adventurer in Paint Attuned to the Beat and Offbeat of Jazz," The New York Times, June 6, 2003 (illustrated).
Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist; Kwong M. Y. Lum, New York; private collection, New York.
According to Johnson, whose review of the exhibition "Frederick J. Brown, Portraits in Jazz, Blues and Other Icons" at The Studio Museum in Harlem appeared in The New York Times, the African-American artist Brown (1945-2012) was, "Born in Chicago, the son of a shoeshine parlor operator whose friends included Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Lightnin' Hopkins. In college, Mr. Brown studied architecture and painting, graduating from Southern Illinois State University in Carbondale. He then made his way to New York, where, in 1970, he established a studio in SoHo and immersed himself in the downtown world of avant-garde artists, musicians and writers. As a painter, Mr. Brown was initially inspired by Abstract Expressionism. But music was never far from his thoughts."
Lowery Sims, who wrote the essay for the exhibition catalogue Frederick J. Brown, Portraits in Jazz, Blues and Other Icons, noted that Brown completed his first large-scale painting, measuring 18x12 feet, in 1968. According to Sims, "Brown's first solo gallery exhibition occurred in 1975 at Noah Goldowsky Gallery, which held shows of work by Jules Olitski, Dan Christensen, and Bowling. By that time, Brown's work was already in several noted collections, including those of Chase Manhattan Bank, the Connecticut Bank and Trust, American Telephone and Telegraph, and the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Connecticut. When Brown expressed a desire to meet [Willem] de Kooning, Noah Goldowsky facilitated the introduction by driving Brown to de Kooning's home on Long Island. De Kooning instilled in Brown an awareness 'that art is a very old profession, going back to the cave paintings of the prehistoric era,' and told him that when he became successful at painting, he would be able to help other people with the money he made."
Brown's work is part of the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City. In 1988, Brown had the first solo exhibition by a Western artist at the Museum of the Chinese Revolution (now the National Museum of China) in Tienanmen Square in Beijing, China. Brown was formerly represented by Marlborough Gallery, New York, since 2020 his estate has been represented by Berry Campbell Gallery, New York.
