Brown spent his early years in England and in Scotland, where he studied glass cutting as well as painting. He was inspired to come to America in 1853 by a song about immigrant life that he heard in a music hall. He settled in Brooklyn where he worked for the glass-cutting firm of William Owen who would become his father-in-law. Realizing his young employee's true ambitions, Owen encouraged him to pursue his art study in the evenings. Brown attended the Academy's antique and life classes for the year of 1857-58, and made his debut in an Academy annual exhibition that opened immediately following the end of the school year with two portraits. He continued in the life class for 1858-59, and again was represented in the spring Academy annual exhibition; this time with two portrait subjects and a genre subject--that had found a buyer.
By 1861, Brown had taken a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building, occupying the rooms being vacated by George H. Boughton who was leaving soon for Europe. Before he left, however, Brown observed Boughton at work on a painting of a group of boys, an experience that seems to have been influential on Brown's future. It was in the Tenth Street building that Brown began his life-long concentration on this same theme: children. Earlier in his career his children were of the country and his paintings were part of the mid-century preoccupation with the innocence of pastoral life that was fast slipping away as America became an industrial power. But increasingly Brown turned to the urban scene for his subject matter, and eventually made a specialty of images of bootblacks, newsboys and other youths who made their livings--and sometimes their homes--in city streets. Brown's proficiency at presenting this sad by-product of an overcrowded, underemployed New York as a quaint attribute of city life made his art extremely popular. His prodigious output of paintings and shrewd marketing practices in copyrighting them and issuing reproductive prints made him a wealthy man.
Brown was a consistent participant in Academy exhibition, missing hardly a year from his first appearance in 1858 to his death. He also was actively involved in the administration of the Academy and its school. He served on the Council from 1872 to 1877, 1879 to 1883, 1885 to 1888, 1895 to 1898, and then was returned to the Council as the Academy's vice president from 1899 to 1903. He was made a visitor to the school in what was perhaps the most difficult year of its history, 1875-76; in the winter of 1881, the students of the portrait class engaged him as their teacher "at their own expense." In 1902 he sponsored a twenty-five dollar prize in the illustration class.
Not surprisingly, Brown was also an active exhibitor at the Brooklyn Art Association. In addition his obviously considerable time devoted to his painting and his work for the Academy, Brown also managed to serve as president of the American Watercolor Society for many years, and as president of the Artists' Fund Society for a decade; he was also chairman of the National Art Committee, and was a member of the jury of awards at the 1893 Columbian Exposition.
