Lyme, October 5, 1863

Charles DeWolf Brownell (1822-1909) belongs to a small but influential group of American painters who received at least part of their artistic education under Julies Busch (1821-1858) of Hartford. Several of Busch’s other students, including John Lee Fitch (1836-1895), achieved great success painting in the Adirondacks and the White Mountains, but Brownell proved to be the most adventurous, an artist whose travels in Cuba were surpassed only by the South American expeditions of his close friend, the celebrated artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900).

Little is known about Busch, though Brownell shares with Fitch an early mastery of the then-unnamed style that became the Hudson River School. Church, one of the first pillars of the movement, later became one of Brownell’s primary influences. The two struck up their long-lasting friendship about 1853, the same year Brownell first traveled to Cuba and Church to South America. While Church was drawn to South America by a nascent interest in scientific exploration and the work of the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, Brownell had a more personal connection to the Cuban landscape. Descended from a Bristol, Rhode Island family with a portfolio of sugar and coffee plantations that made it one of the wealthiest in New England, Brownell sought to familiarize himself with the terrain that contributed so much to his financial liberty. His panoramic and vibrant paintings offer an essential visual record of the landscape, light, and mood of the economically vital Caribbean island.

Zachary D. Ross, Charles DeWolf Brownell: A Decade of Travel, 186-66 ( New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 2004), 11.