Jennie Augusta Brownscombe

Jennie Augusta Brownscombe (December 10, 1850 – August 5, 1936) was an American painter, designer, etcher, commercial artist, and illustrator. Brownscombe studied art for years in the United States and in Paris. She was a founding member, student and teacher at the Art Students League of New York. She made genre paintings, including revolutionary and colonial American history, most notably The First Thanksgiving held at Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, Massachusetts. She sold the reproduction rights to more than 100 paintings, and images of her work have appeared on prints, calendars and greeting cards. Her works are in many public collections and museums. In 1899 she was described by New York World as "one of America's best artists".

Personal life Brownscombe was born December 10, 1850 in a -story farmhouse near Irving Cliff in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and built the home she was born and raised in.

After her father's death in 1868, Brownscombe earned a living teaching and creating book and magazine illustrations, which were inspired by the streams and fields around her home and nearby Irving Cliff. She often visited her mother in Honesdale, until her death in 1891. When he died, Hall left his home and property in the Catskills to Brownscombe, including the painting "Danaë and the Golden Shower" by John Smibert. Its location was unknown as of 1969. After Hall's death, Brownscombe spent the winters in Bayside and New York City and the summer in the Catskills. By 1917 she had donated other textiles, a silver filigree brooch, and a 17th-century Flemish tapestry that depicted the marriage of Alexander the Great and Roxana. She also donated a George Henry Hall sketchbook, a 15th-century textile, and a pair of Etruscan earrings.

Education Art Students League of New York Building, West 57th Street, New York, New York. Brownscome was a founding member, student and instructor at the school. In 1871, she went to New York City, studied under Victor Nehlig and graduated from the Cooper Institute School of Design for Women in 1872. She studied at the National Academy of Design for a couple of years under Lemuel Wilmarth until she became a founding member and student of the Art Students League of New York. Some of her popular paintings are the "idealized vision of traditional rural life and family" in Love's Young Dream (1887) and The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth (1914), in the collection of the Pilgrim Hall Museum at Plymouth, Massachusetts. In 1899 she was described by New York World as "one of America's best artists".

She was a member of the New York Women Painters Society, American Artists Professional League, Although she primarily made genre paintings, she also made portraits Artists "played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplyfying this emerging type through their own lives." In the late 19th century and early 20th century about 88% of the subscribers of 11,000 magazines and periodicals were women. As women entered the artist community, publishers hired women to create illustrations that depict the world through a woman's perspective. Brownscombe's work expressed a sentimental viewpoint, as in Love's Young Dream and a feminine perspective is evident in The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth which depicts a woman in the foreground with her two children. Other successful illustrators were Jessie Wilcox Smith, Rose O'Neill, Elizabeth Shippen Green, and Violet Oakley.

She sold the reproduction rights to more than 100 of her works, which were produced for greeting cards, calendars and prints

Colonial Revival Brownscombe was among a group of artists of the Colonial Revival Movement that admired colonial heroes like George Washington and colonial history, inspired by the 1876 centennial. Other artists included Howard Pyle, Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, Henry Alexander Ogden, Edward Percy Moran, and John Ward Dunsmore. Their works, inspired by earlier artwork and George Washington biographies, were publicized in color in books, magazines, calendars and other commercial products, utilizing contemporary advances in lithographic printing. Many were also sold into private collections. She was also becoming more aware of the colonial roots of her mother's family. She made paintings of other colonial scenes in the 1890s; That 1914 Thanksgiving painting has a few historical inaccuracies: the Native Americans are dressed as Plains Indians and the presence of the log cabin. Pointedly, the anachronistic Plains Indians headdresses depicted in her 1914 painting were not repeated when Brownscombe recreated the First Thanksgiving scene in her 1925 painting "Thanksgiving at Plymouth".

She made a painting of the landing at Plymouth Rock about 1920 entitled Landing of the Pilgrims with a woman of "Botticelli quality" as the central figure in a pyramid shaped composition. According to author and historian John D. Seelye, "Hers is a tender presence guarded by the advancing figures of Miles Standish with pikestaff and sword and a Pilgrim (probably John Carver) with a blunderbuss, but it reminds us that by the tercentenary year women in America were gathering political strength."

Portraits In the 1920s she made portraits of federal Circuit Court of Appeals judges,

Businesslike while painting, sure of her technique, she ignored criticism, praise, changes in the art world, and demands of society; she called her art and its accompanying research "great fun". — Florence Woolsey Hazzard A Rest by the Way, black and white, by 1879 A Welcome Step, by 1902 Awaiting the Victor, by 1892 Dawn's Early Light, Francis Scott Key, Baltimore Harbor, oil painting, early 20th century Day-dreams, painting, by 1874 First Thanksgiving at Plymouth (study), c. 1910 Homecoming, oil painting, 1885 Peaceful Mount Vernon, oil painting, c. 1905 Sunday Morning in Sleepy Hollow, by 1902 The New Scholar, oil on canvas, 1897, Gilcrease Museum, University of Tulsa The Parson's Bride Washington Greeting Lafayette at Mount Vernon, oil painting, early 20th century, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania You Can't Go, black and white, by 1879