Hugh Boycott Brown RSMA: Scenes from East Anglia

Thompson’s Gallery Aldeburgh will be showing a small private collection of works by Hugh Boycott Brown, the East Anglian painter who captures the light and mood of the East Anglian skies and sea so perfectly. It is a lovely collection of landscapes but also includes a spectacular painting of Snape Maltings which was painted for the Benson & Hedges Music Festival at Snape Maltings held on 29th September 1980.. This group of paintings have been in private collections for several decades and really look fabulous together as a body of work representing the best of the painter’s ability.

 

Painter and teacher Hugh Boycott-Brown was born in Bushey, Hertfordshire in 1909, where his father Allan Robert Brown was art master at the Royal Masonic School. Several other members of the family were artists too and Boycott Brown learned from his watercolourist father and studied at the Margaret Frobisher School, Bushey. In 1929 he began teaching at Royal Masonic Junior School but he continued his studies in the evenings at Watford School of Art; during holidays studied at Heatherley’s School under Frederic Whiting and Bernard Adams and during the 1930s was much encouraged by Sir John Arnesby Brown. By then Boycott Brown had begun his association with the East Anglian coast and early on he began to paint plein air, capturing the sudden changes of light and colour. Old sailing barges and other interesting craft were always popular subjects but cloud formations were also of particular interest to Boycott Brown, he kept detailed charts linking prevailing winds to cloud forms in order that he could use them to the best advantage in this work. Although the East Anglian coast was a major theme in his work, he also painted a lot abroad with Brittany being one of his favourite places to paint scenes from.