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Benjamin Chambers Brown

This biography was submitted by Fleischer Museum
Though the still life's popular of the era often featured bowls or 

Indian baskets of California poppies, the icon of poppy covered 

slopes was probably only developed in the late 1890s. 

Brown wrote that on one of William Wendt's trips to southern 

California around 1900, he showed up at Brown's door "with a 

collection of poppy and other landscapes" looking for a studio in 

which to work. A seminal poppy picture painted by

Wendt on a Malibu ranch in 1898 is known to be in a private collection.

We also know that Brown, who specialized in portrait and figure 

painting, did not sell any work until about 1900, when he sold a 

landscape of the poppy field that stretched between Altadena and

Eaton Canyon. By 1905, Brown was known for his poppy field

paintings, which "have hardly remained long enough in his studio to 

become thoroughly dry." Brown, who lived in such close proximity

 to the fields, seems a natural for coming up with the poppy theme.

Other artists recognized the salability of poppy pictures. Along with 

Brown, John Gamble and Granville Redmond became the best-known

of many southern California artists who ultimately essayed the theme. 

There is no East Coast movement comparable to the California 

wildflower painters, although certain Texas artists became known for

painting fields of bluebonnets. Even San Francisco artists were not 

as fond of the subject as their southern counterparts.

Credit: A Time and Place, From the Ries Collection of California 

Painting, The Oakland Museum.