Peter Brown (b. 1967) made his name as a painter of the urban scene, first of all on the streets of his adopted city of Bath, where he battled with petty-officialdom as much as the Great British weather for the right to paint out-of-doors and on-the-spot.
Peter’s strong adherence to plein-air practice is entirely in line with the founding principles of the New English Art Club, of which he is a member. Founded in 1886 by a generation of progressive, Francophile painters, early contributors to the New English Art Club included Philip Wilson Steer, Walter Sickert and Stanhope Forbes. This fundamental working practice has earned him the sobriquet of ‘Pete the Street’.
In the paintings in Peter’s forthcoming exhibition at Messum’s, bridges, pedestrian crossings, thoroughfares of all kinds appear with regularity but many of the locations in which he has chosen to set up his easel seem this year to be a little more removed from the city’s main tourist hotspots. The passersby are more likely to be on their way home to Notting Hill or Holland Park than on their way to the January sales on Oxford Street. Perhaps Peter himself has begun to feel more at home in the metropolis—he certainly paints her as one with intimate knowledge of her quieter backwaters and tranquil havens.
