11:59 a.m., March 19, 2009----A 1961 intaglio print entitled A World by Hilton Brown, Harriet T. Baily Professor of Art, Art History and Women's Studies at the University of Delaware, has been acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as part of its permanent collection of prints and drawings.

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Brown's print was purchased by Reba and Dave Williams for their Collection of American Prints in 1999 from a private print gallery in Boston and was subsequently housed at the Williams' Print Research Foundation in Stamford, Conn., which was established by the couple in 2003.

The renowned collection of American prints and foundation were recently acquired by the National Gallery. The Williams Collection is unrivaled in scope and contains more than 5,200 prints made by American artists from approximately 1875-1975. It is among the largest and finest private collections of American prints in the world.

“Reba and Dave Williams' collection has extraordinary quality and breadth and gives the National Gallery of Art an entirely new standing in the field of American prints,” according to Earl A. Powell III, gallery director.

“Having work in the permanent collection of the National Gallery is one of the greatest achievements a visual artist can have because this means your work in that collection will be properly cared for, studied and exhibited,” Brown said.

“I had actually forgotten about this print until I received an e-mail around 2002 from the curator of the Williams Collection,” Brown said. “She wanted to know if I was the artist 'HBrown' who created a 1961 intaglio print titled A World. I answered in the affirmative and asked where, when and for much my print had been acquired. Having a tangible record about my print I discovered that it was sold by a Chicago auction house in 1999 and had remained in a private collection in the Midwest since the 1960s.

“As I then remembered, I sold the print to a Chicago gallery director who represented my artwork at that time for $35, and I was informed by the Williams Collection curator that it was purchased in 2002 for $2,500,” Brown added.

During the early 1960s Brown was experimenting with several styles of abstraction including abstract impressionism, optical art, hard edge and color field painting.

In the first state, his print A World began “life” as random textures, lines and dots using the intaglio techniques of soft ground, hard ground and aquatint, Brown said. These marks were inspired by light being reflected from dew on grass in the early sunlit morning in Maine where he spent several summers at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the early 1960s.

Appearing too amorphous as a design on the copperplate, he said he decided his image required focus and dramatic intensity and so added a perfectly delineated circle similar to the ones he was using in his oil and watercolor paintings at that time.

In addition, he said, “I completed this print at a time when lunar exploration was in the forefront of the President Kennedy's inspired leadership into space for our country.”

The print evolved into three states of this design and the National Gallery's proof is from the third state. He printed only eight proofs of A World using a handmade blue-black ink that he printed on Zerkall mouldmade German paper. The print is approximately 14 by 28 inches in size.

The following institutions have also acquired paintings, prints and drawings for their permanent collections by Brown: the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the St. Louis Museum of Art, the University of Maryland College Park, Goucher College, Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., Macomb County College in Detroit, Mich., and other public, corporate and private institutions.

He has had 24 one-person shows, and his work has been included in over 145 invitational and juried group shows. His artwork is currently represented by Gary Snyder/Project Space in New York City.

A painter, draughtsman and printmaker, as well as a writer on the history of the technology of art and curator, Brown received his bachelor's and master's of fine arts degrees from the Art Institute of Chicago. He also studied theatrical design at the Goodman Theater School of Drama in Chicago and liberal arts at the University of Chicago and University of Illinois at Chicago.

While chairperson and professor of visual arts at Goucher College in Baltimore, he joined the UD faculty in 1974 as a visiting associate professor of art history, having been recruited to become a core faculty member of the newly founded Winterthur/University of Delaware Graduate Program in Art Conservation. In 1978 he became a full professor of art and art conservation at UD. Shortly thereafter he founded and served for 15 years as director of the undergraduate program in art conservation.

Brown has held two named professorships here. He was the Ralph Mayer Professor of Artists Techniques during the 1980s and is currently the Harriet T. Baily Professor.

Brown has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the School of Fine Arts of Washington University in St. Louis. For the past 15 years he as given lectures and demonstrations and served as a consultant for the Education Department at the National Gallery of Art.

Additionally he has given lectures about artists materials and techniques at museums and universities throughout the United States at such institutions as the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Towson State University, the University of Minnesota, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Delaware Art Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the National Museum of Technology of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Cooper-Hewitt Museum, NYC, the Philips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Dallas Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and others

As a writer, Brown was a contributing editor of American Artist Magazine during the 1980s. He wrote a monthly column entitled "Looking at Paintings with Hilton Brown." Additionally he has written a monograph and several exhibition catalogs.

He was also worked as a curator at Goucher College, for several shows at UD and at the Brandywine River Museum.

Article by Sue Moncure
Photo by Ambre Alexander