JOHN GEORGE BROWN | GOLDEN LOCKS

Estate of a New England Collector (sold: Sotheby's, New York, December 1, 1988, lot 38 (as Left Behind))

Private collection (sold: Doyle, New York, December 10, 2002, lot 36)

Spanierman Gallery, LLC, New York

Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2005

Martha Hoppin, The World of J.G. Brown, Chesterfield, Massachusetts, 2010, pp. 104, 231, illustrated p. 103

Holly Pyne Conner, ed., Angels and Tomboys: Girlhood in Nineteenth-Century American Art, Newark, New Jersey, 2012, p. 63, illustrated fig. 42

According to the scholar Martha Hoppin, the present work depicts the artist's daughter, Mabel Brown: "Mabel frequently served as a model for her father at the end of the decade. She is seen in such activities as offering the viewer a drink of water from a tin cup, leaning against a swing, picking flowers, and opening a door. She is also the pouting young girl in a work now called Golden Locks, in which she is identified by the initials 'M.B.' carved on a bench. Her pose—a causal flounce that reveals a portion of her thigh—is at once charmingly lifelike and innocent in intent" (The World of J.G. Brown, Chesterfield, Massachusetts, 2010, p. 104).