John George Brown

J. G. (John George) Brown began his successful career as a genre painter around 1860. Within a few years he had found his niche specializing in often humorous narratives of children at play. Such depictions were especially popular after the Civil War with a public for whom children symbolized the country's lost innocence and its future hope. From 1880 through 1910, Brown painted hundreds of portraits of New York street children.