Permanent Collection

 Paintings

Southern Alleghenies

Museum of Art

Colleen Browning

(American, b. Ireland, 1929-2003)

Picture of a Painting of the Great

Circus Parade,  1988

Oil on canvas, 42 1/2" x 66 1/2"

Gift of the Southern Alleghenies

Museum of Art Auxiliary, courtesy

of Harmon-Meek Gallery

(96.009)

 

Realist artist Colleen Browning found inspiration for her paintings in her everyday world and in her travels to exotic locations.  The circus town of Baraboo, Wisconsin, inspired one of her most impressive series of paintings, which features the circus, pageants, clowns, and marching bands.  Picture of a Painting of the Great Circus Parade, 1988, is a study of illusion, fragmented and combined mirrors of reality.

Of Celtic ancestry, Browning was born in County Cork, Ireland.  She received her early artistic training at a provincial art school in southern England, where her accomplishments led to a scholarship at London's Slade School of Art.  Her first solo exhibition was held at London's Little Gallery when Browning was 20 years old.  From her immigration to the United States in 1949, she exhibited her work in the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, the Carnegie International, at Chicago's Art Institute, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Academy of Design in New York City.  As one of America's most accomplished realists, Browning was a leader in the realist revival of the 1990s.


Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art
Saint Francis University Mall

P.O. Box 9,

Loretto, Pennsylvania  15940
Phone: (814) 472-3920  

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