Introduction

In May 2004 Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE donated the major part of his incomparable collection of Australian art to the National Gallery of Victoria. At the time this was the most generous single gift of works of art ever made to a public gallery in Australia.

Known as the Joseph Brown Collection it is on permanent display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia.

The Joseph Brown Collection offers an encapsulated survey of Australian art. It presents key works by some of Australia’s greatest visual artists ranging from work by colonial artists John Glover and Conrad Martens; Impressionist painters Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and John Russell to works by Indigenous artists Paddy Japaljarri Stewart and Trevor Nickolls. It includes work produced during the interwar years by Margaret Preston, Daryl Lindsay and Danila Vassilieff along with major figures of the post-war period including Russell Drysdale, Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, Max Meldrum and Albert Tucker. Sculpture is also represented with works by Rayner Hoff, Inge King, Robert Klippel and Norma Redpath.

The Collection also tells the story of an extraordinary man − an immigrant who became an artist, a successful businessman and an art dealer, a mentor to artists and an art patron and philanthropist; a man who through his gift has enriched Victoria’s state collection and has made an enduring difference to the culture of Australia.

Joseph Brown was born in Poland in 1918 and migrated to Australia in 1933, at the age of fifteen, settling in Melbourne. He trained initially as an artist but after returning from war service in 1945 became increasingly involved in the fashion industry as a designer and manufacturer of women’s garments. Later he became a leading art dealer and consultant promoting a wide range of Australian artists, both historical and contemporary. He helped reclaim the work of forgotten artists including that of Danila Vassilieff, he introduced local collectors to work by artists such as Roger Kemp and William Delafield Cook, mentored many new artists, and was a great advocate for portraiture as an art form. Simultaneously he built up an outstanding private collection of Australian art. Dr Brown died in Melbourne in 2009 at ninety-one.

This online edition of the Joseph Brown Collection publication has been produced to coincide with the centenary of Joseph Brown’s birth. It contains text and entries from the original hardcopy version with some revisions and additions.