Adam's The Deborah Brown Collection 1st October 2024

110 Deborah Brown was born in Belfast in 1927, but spent much of her childhood in Cushendun, on the North Coast of Co. Antrim, where she met James Humbert Craig and received informal painting les- sons from him. After studying at Belfast College of Art and the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, she moved to Paris in 1950, where her experiences of modern French painting, in addition to stained glass at Notre Dame and Chartres cathedrals and tapestries at the Musée de Cluny, transformed her work. Soon after her return, in 1951, she was in- vited to hold a one-person exhibition with CEMA (Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts), the forerunner of the Arts Council, with a subsequent exhibition organised in Glasgow in 1955 by the Brit- ish Council. John Hewitt’s encouragement also led to her 1956 solo exhibition at Bel- fast Museum and Art Gallery, now the Ul- ster Museum. Between these, in 1953, she began to exhibit with the Victor Wadding- ton Gallery in Dublin and, also, in London with the Mayfair Gallery in 1954. Deborah Brown exhibited with the Ulster Academy of Arts between 1946 and 1976 and, also, regularly with the Society of Women Art- ists in London, the Women’s International Art Club and the Ulster Society of Women Artists. In the late 1950s, Deborah Brown’s work became completely abstract and she ex- hibited increasingly outside Ireland, in- cluding with the New Vision Centre Gal- lery, in London, the Free Painters Group and at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol. She also began to exhibit at the Irish Exhibi- tion of Living Art, as well as making stage