Identity:

Henriette Browne, was the pseudonmyn adopted by the artist Sophie de Saux, who married the diplomat Comte Jules de Saux. They had no children and he died in 1879. She was the daughter of Comte de Bouteillier.

Life:

Browne was a genre painter and print maker. She studied under Emile Perrin from 1849 and Charles Chaplin from 1851, making her début at the Salon in 1853. She exhibited there until 1878, being awarded a third class medal in 1855, 1857 and 1863, and a second class medal in 1861. In 1863 Henri Fantin-Latour made mention of Browne to JW, referring to her works as 'charming' (#01078). She also exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, and in London at the French Gallery in Pall Mall (promoted by Gambart), the International Exhibition, the Society of Female Artists and Royal Academy, as well as at the International Colonial Exhibition in Amsterdam.

Browne was widely travelled, visiting the Netherlands, Italy, Constantinople, Morocco, Egypt and Syria. Many of her paintings of the 1860s took their subjects from the lives of Arabs in the north of Africa and in the East, for example, A Visit (Harem Interior, Constantinople, 1860).

Her earlier works show a concern for realism, for example, A Brother of the Christian Schools (1855; Manchester City Art Galleries). She was one of the three female founders of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1862, and was elected an honorary member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in London in 1894.

Bibliography:

Bénézit, E., Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, 8 vols, Paris, 1956-61; Delia Gaze (ed.), Dictionary of Women Artists, 2 vols, London, 1997.