Called "the American Claude, the Yankee Turner and the Bostonian Rubens," by the New York Times, Brown was celebrated for his use of color and light. He trained as a printmaker in his native Boston, and went abroad early in the 1830s to study painting and to copy Old Masters. He spent the better part of the next three decades in Europe, most of the last two in Rome. His landscapes of Italy, influenced by the work of the 17th-century French master Claude Lorrain, were popular both with American tourists abroad and Bostonians at home. He continued to paint Italian subjects even after his return to America in 1859, when he also began to feature local subjects in his work.
This painting, unusual in Brown's oeuvre for its impressionistic sketchiness, shows The Public Garden in Boston from the entrance at Arlington Street and Commonwealth Avenue. In the center, the gold dome of Charles Bulfinch's State House rises above the line of trees and Beacon Hill townhouses. The white spire of Park Street Church is visible at the right. The bridge over the lagoon in the garden (which would become home to the Swan Boats beginning in 1877) can be seen at the right as well. In the foreground stands the equestrian statue of George Washington by Thomas Ball. Although the Public Garden was founded in 1839, the sculpture was not placed there until 1869, thus the painting must date to that year or later.

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