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Deborah Brown was born in Belfast in 1927, but spent much of her childhood in Cushendun, on the North Coast of Co. Antrim, where she met James Humbert Craig and received informal painting lessons from him. After studying at Belfast College of Art and the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, she moved to Paris in 1950, where her experiences of modern French painting, in addition to stained glass at Notre Dame and Chartres cathedrals and tapestries at the Musée de Cluny, transformed her work.
Throughout the next 70 years of her career, Deborah Brown would go on to become one of the most prolific Irish artists, her works held in notable public collections, including the Hugh Lane Gallery, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, National Museums Northern Ireland, and the Arts Council of Ireland. Deborah Brown had moved to Ramelton, in County Donegal, in the early 2000s, and she died there in April 2023.
The Calm Revolution of Deborah Brown
In 2021, at the suggestion of her long standing friend and highly regarded fellow-artist Philip Flanagan, Dickon Hall and Jane Beattie were commissioned by Deborah Brown to create a catalogue of the art at her home in the small Donegal town of Ramelton, where she had lived for around two decades. Much of this was a fascinating collection of works by her artist friends and contemporaries, and those who had particularly influenced the trajectory of her career, in some aspect or another. The range included handsome landscapes by her first art teacher and family friend, James Humbert Craig; stylish modernist compositions by Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone; and pictures by contemporaries of whom Deborah was particularly fond, such as Alice Berger Hammerschlag, Terry Flanagan, William Scott, and Basil Blackshaw.
Throughout the cataloguing process, Hall and Beattie had the pleasure of witnessing the evolution of Deborah’s style. From her teenage years to the fateful stay in Paris, clear and distinct influences can be seen from the artists in her collection.
The Calm Evolution of Deborah Brown
Before 1950, when she lived in Paris, Deborah Brown painted predominantly landscapes and still life subjects on a small scale. James Humbert Craig, a friend and early teacher, is the most obvious influence on this work, although some group scenes also suggest an awareness of the Euston Road School.
On her return from Paris, Deborah Brown began to paint rhythmic, stylised, and highly coloured works drawn from Irish legends(particularly from the north Antrim coast where she had been brought up), and some Biblical subjects. Although only in her mid-twenties, she held regular solo exhibitions, including with the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery (now the Ulster Museum), the British Council, and the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts. At this time in Deborah’s career, the influence of Evie Hone can be seen clearly reflected in her experimentation with colour and shape.
Evie Hone RHA (1894 – 1955) was an Irish painter and stained-glass artist. Hone is considered an early pioneer of cubism. Although most famous for her stained glass, Hone’s style of painting is widely recognised for her use of vivid and contrasting colours as well as the balance of angular and round shapes in her works.
During this period Deborah also looked to Mainie Jellett for inspiration. Mainie Jellett (1897 – 1944) akin to Hone, was one of the first abstract painters in Ireland. Similarly to Deborah Brown, in 1921 Jellett also spent a period of time in Paris, which would be a turning point in her career as she would encounter Cubism for the first time. Jellett would go on to be an advocate for Cubism, as her first exhibition of cubist paintings in 1923 would be met with harsh criticism.
Jellett’s influence on Deborah Brown can be seen clearly in her choices of religious subject matters. Jellett being a deeply committed Christian, some of her works bear religious titles and, in some respects, resemble icons.
Throughout the 1950s, Deborah Brown’s work became increasingly abstracted, partly due to the experience of painting stage sets and designs for Mary O’Malley at the Lyric Theatre, until in 1958 she began to make her first gestural non-representational paintings. Although keenly engaged with American and European contemporaries, such as Pollock, Rothko, and de Stael, she quickly began to explore three-dimensionality, breaking through the canvas surface and adding everyday materials in a manner that foreshadowed the emergence of the Arte Povera movement later in the decade. From the mid-1960s, Brown used fibreglass in a sculptural manner on canvas or board and eventually began to make independent three-dimensional fibreglass works.
Deborah Brown’s deep humanity and empathy began to dominate her work in the 1970s, as she made environmental works and bronzes that explored themes of alienation and human interaction with wit and insight. Her sculpture increasingly reflected her enduring love of animals and their presence in her childhood in Cushendun. Brown’s monumental Sheep on the Road, located outside the Waterfront Hall in Belfast, remains one of the best-known public sculptures in the city; Hilary Pyle described how this‘ transitory moment on the road conveys in essence, something of the everlasting’
The following maquette was used in the creation of the life-sized bronze sculpture now situated outside the Waterfront Hall in Belfast. The bronze sculpture was commissioned by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 1991. Later in 1999, the sculpture was purchased by Laganside Corporation and placed in-front of Waterfront Hall. The Sheep on the Road remains one of Deborah Brown’s most famous works.
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John ffrench was an instrumental figure in the design industry in Ireland and a distinguished pioneer of Irish studio pottery.
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"I should declare my hand. I have a weakness for pictures that punch above their physical weight, and for artists who have been quietly underrated for too long. This pair is both. They are intimate enough to live with at close quarters and serious enough to repay any amount of looking. If the market has lately shown signs of catching up with eighteenth-century Irish painting and I think it has, these two small panels feel, to me, like exactly the sort of thing that will look obvious in twenty years’ time."
Adam’s is honoured to present works from the collection of Lord Rossmore in the upcoming Country House Collections auction at Howth Castle on 28th April. It is seldom that an influential Irish family collection that has survived through the generations comes to the open market.
Works Sold at Adam’s Now in the Irish National Collection
A great opportunity to purchase both established and lesser-known artist’s work at an accessible price point, the Online Picture Auction is the first of many sales to be hosted at Adam’s in 2026. It is perfect for those looking to start a collection and the discerning collector alike.
Through this article, let our expert Adam Pearson guiding you to the (re)discovery of the once established Irish painter Richard O’Neill.
James Adam & Sons Ltd, Fine Art Auctioneers and Valuers, 26 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,
D02 X665, Ireland
