Description

Extended Data

Birth Place

Walichnowy, Poland

Biography

painter and ornithologist, was born at Walichnowy, near Wielun, Poland, on 7 March 1837, son of Gracius (Gracjan) Brojnowski, a landowner and former military officer of the Polish nobility, and Alicia, née Nieszkowska. He studied art, classics and languages at Munich University. To avoid conscription into the Russian Imperial Army he roamed around Europe and London in poverty, his possessions having been stolen earlier in Germany. Hearing tales of the Australian goldfields, he boarded a windjammer bound for Victoria as a deck-hand in 1857 and swam ashore at Portland after an exceedingly unpleasant six months’ voyage. He then walked from one Victorian rural settlement to another, working as a shepherd, stockman and independent farmer. A few years later Broinowski returned to Melbourne. He married Jane Smith, daughter of a whaling captain (perhaps James Smith ), at Richmond on 17 August 1864. To support his growing family he found a canvassing job with the Melbourne printsellers and publishers Hamel & Ferguson, selling numerous copies of von Gu é rard 's Australian Landscapes (Melbourne 1866-67) for them. Broinowski’s major interest was painting, so he decided to attempt to gain a livelihood from this through art unions, conceived on a far grander scale than ever previously attempted. He travelled throughout Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland as far north as Cooktown (in August 1875), existing by painting views of the towns and countryside as he went and selling tickets at his various stops in grand art unions of his pictures held in the capital cities. He spent several years doing this but no paintings he produced have been located, largely because he used the pseudonym G.J. Browne (commonly cited as 'Brown’). He is possibly the 'Browne’ who signed two extant sketches of the gold-diggings (Royal Commonwealth Society, London) and almost certainly the 'George J. Browne’ listed as a Sydney artist in 1871. He was undoubtedly the 'G.J. Browne’ who was holding an exhibition at the Brisbane Town Hall in April 1875 before disposing of his pictures by means of an art union. He stated that the proceeds would be used to enable him to travel through Queensland 'to take sketches of the scenery, for publication in England’. The Telegraph reported that Browne was 'a really talented’ artist of whom the press of Victoria and South Australia had spoken in the most flattering terms, and identified his exhibits as being mainly oil and watercolour views of alpine scenery from Italy, Switzerland and around the Wimmera River, Victoria. From Brisbane, the artist went to Ipswich, then made his way to Charters Towers. By September 'Gracius J. Browne’ was at Gympie, again displaying his collection of 'chromo-lithographs, oleographs, and original oil paintings’ (all his own work) at the School of Arts 'previous to their disposal on the principle of the London Art Union’. The Gympie Times thought the whole collection good 'and the oil paintings of a very high order of artistic merit’. He then returned to Brisbane. The draw for his 400 pictures was held in the Town Hall on 29 October 1875. The problems of distribution are overwhelming, but he seems to have remained in Brisbane in 1876, possibly doing this. G. J. Browne exhibited in Tasmania as a “visiting artist”, who had matriculated at Munich and was called a pupil of the 'great Colbach’. In 1877 he held an exhibition of his work in the Launceston Town Hall. ( Tasmanian 21 April 1877, 10). 'He has received several commissions to paint pictures of some of our most picturesque localities’ ( Tasmanian 2 June 1877, 10). Gracius J. Browne was listed as a resident Sydney artist in 1878-81, but throughout these itinerant years he regularly returned to his family in Melbourne. He was listed among the artists and portrait painters working there in 1878 and 1880. At Melbourne in 1879, still as G.J. Browne, he published a facsimile of Wenceslaus Hollar’s famous 1647 engraving of London before the Great Fire. The following year all the Brojnowskis – now spelt Broinowski (although Gracius continued to use Browne professionally until about 1882) – moved to Sydney. There Gracius taught painting privately and at various boys’ schools – Riverview, St Aloysius and Newington College. In 1880 'Mr. Gracius C. Brown…after traversing Victoria, South Australia, and Queensland in search of the picturesque and lovely in the way of scenery’, organised another art union of his paintings. Included were: 'a view on the Thompson River, Gippsland, showing the road from Walhalla to the Flourbag Hill … [and] a scene in the Bullo Ranges, in the north-east district of Victoria – a study in grays and browns, which when its present crudeness has worn off, will be a most attractive picture’. Wauphool Lake, Gleneslay Station, in the Grampians was said to resemble Buvelot 's Waterpool at Coleraine in its composition and golden Claudean glow. Other paintings cited were a view on Stockyard Creek (a fern gully landscape) and On the Ovens with the snow-capped Buffalo Ranges in the distance. Elaine , 'where the “Lily Maid of Astolat” is seen laid out in bridal splendour on a stately barge’, was mentioned as one of the few figure paintings on view in his Elizabeth Street, Sydney, studio. Broinowski also gave lectures on art. 'The Art of Design’, a plea for the perfect imitation of 'the best nature’, was delivered in the Sydney School of Arts on 26 November 1880. 'Art’ (which argued the superiority of the visual to the written throughout the ages) was the subject of another at the Ashfield School of Arts on 30 June 1882. He showed paintings in the Art Society of New South Wales’s annual exhibitions in 1881-84. A sketch of a 'drunken carouse’ in a bush shanty titled The Shearer’s Home was one of his exhibits, but most were views. One of the Herbert River, North Queensland, shown early in 1883, was said to depict 'the rich afterglow of sunset brightening the river and the mists of approaching night beginning to make themselves visible’. It was accompanied by a view on the Mitchell River, Gippsland, Victoria, and a view on the Hawkesbury River, New South Wales. 'Mr. B. seems to flit about the rivers of all the colonies with great impartiality’, commented the Sydney Morning Herald . At the society’s fourth exhibition at the end of 1883, Broinowski showed three paintings: a view of Lake Albert, Gippsland ('in which the composition is good, and the water especially well painted’), a portrait of an old woman looking into the future ('every line and wrinkle in her expressive face brought into relief by the light of the candle placed at her right hand’) and another view on the Hawkesbury. The following year his Valley of the Grose was the most prominent painting in the exhibition, the Herald commenting that it was 'an enormous picture, almost large enough for a panorama’. It was not much admired. The Herald dismissed it with the comment that it was 'a faithful reproduction of this oft-painted and photographed spot’, while the Bulletin curtly stated: 'Some persons might like it’. Bondi Lagoon , on the other hand, was considered 'a picturesque bit of Australian scenery’. Early in 1884 Broinowski submitted eight watercolours of Australian birds to the minister for education with the recommendation that a complete series should be published and supplied to all New South Wales schools. Surprisingly, the proposal was accepted, and Broinowski’s prints of Australian birds and mammals were mounted, varnished and hung in classrooms throughout the colony. Even so, only 500 sets were sold to the Education Department instead of the 1000 Broinowski had prepared, so he turned some of the remainder into a book, Birds and Mammals of Australia , bound with appropriate text and published in 1884 -5. The Cockatoos and Nestors of Australia and New Zealand followed in 1888, but his greatest achievement was The Birds of Australia , published in forty monthly parts at 10s each (for subscribers only) in 1889-91. It finally comprised six folio volumes with 303 full-page illustrations lithographed in colour and notes on over 700 species. Limited to 1000 copies, the edition soon sold out. Chisholm states that the plates are considered of little scientific value but also rightly remarks that they are much prized by collectors for their aesthetic qualities. Original drawings for The Birds are in the Dixson Library. Broinowski was naturalised on 19 April 1886. The family moved to Campbelltown about 1890, Gracius having decided, with the help of his sons, to become a farmer. This was not a success and he returned to Sydney and to teaching in 1896. Although intending to publish a new volume, The Avi-Fauna of Australia – a close emulation of John Gould 's Birds – nothing eventuated except three attractive prospectuses (one in 1897 and two in 1910). Broinowski died at Mosman, Sydney, on 12 April 1913, survived by his wife, a daughter and six sons (the seventh son died as an infant). Writers: Staff Writer Date written: 1992 Last updated: 1989

Born

b. 7 March 1837

Summary

Peripatetic artist who produced copious landscape images and sold them off inventively (through art unions). Finally settling down in Sydney, he taught in various private schools and is perhaps best known for his 'Birds' series sold to the Department of Education.

Gender

Male

Died

12-Apr-13

Age at death

76