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Richard Norris Brooke
Richard Norris Brooke
By John Toler
He painted for the sheer love of expression
Over its long history, people from Fauquier County have made their marks in military service, politics, law or philanthropy. But we can also claim a person whose contribution to American art continues to be acknowledged and appreciated.
Richard Norris Brooke (1847-1920) was born at the family home at 74 Waterloo Street, one of the six children of Warrenton attorney James Vass Brooke and Mary Norris Brooke. James served as the Fauquier County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney, and a delegate to Virginia General Assembly.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, James was commissioned a captain in the Confederate army, commanding an artillery unit known as Brooke’s Battery.
Only 14 at the start of the war, Richard Brooke was too young to serve, but he did his part on the home front. After the First Battle of Manassas in July 1861, many of the Confederates wounded in the battle were brought to Warrenton for care. Many died and were buried in the Warrenton Cemetery.
Richard was one of the young people who built and painted the crosses marking their graves, and over the course of the war endured the frequent Union occupation of the town.
The war over and aware of this interests and talents, Richard started his professional training. He was enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and within a year was teaching in art academies in Philadelphia.
Returning to Virginia, Richard was appointed to the Board of Visitors of the Virginia Military Institute, serving from 1871-1873. This was followed by service as U.S. Consul at Rochelle, France from 1873-1877. This gave him the opportunity to study art in Paris in 1878.
In December, 1880, Brooke moved to “Vernon Row,” an artist colony in Washington, D.C. While there he served from 1881-84 as the vice president of the Washington Art Club under its president,. W. W. Corcoran, and he later made several trips to Europe to compile the Thomas Waggaman Art Collection.
Richard maintained his ties to Warrenton, and in 1881 painted his most best-known canvas, “The Pastoral Visit,” depicting an African-American preacher calling at the family home of one of his congregation. The characters he portrayed in the painting were based on actual people he knew in Warrenton.
It was a departure from the works done by other contemporary artists, especially in the South. His explanation revealed the heart and humanity that accompanied his talent.
“It must have struck many of you that the fine range of subject afforded by Negro domestic life has been strangely abandoned to works of flimsy treatment and vulgar exaggeration,” he wrote. “That peculiar humor, which is characteristic of the race, and varies with the individual, cannot be thus crudely conveyed.
“In entering this field, by the advice of many of my artist friends, and with the equipment of a foreign training, I have had a deliberate purpose in view. It has been my aim while recognizing in proper measure the humorous features of my subject, to elevate it to that plane of sober and truthful treatment which, in French Art, has dignified the Peasant subjects of Jules Breton, and should characterize every work of art I am pleased to think, from the reception given by the public to this effort, that my object – however realized – has been felt, and appreciated.”
“The Pastoral Visit” was purchased by the Corcoran Art Gallery, where it remains today. Other popular works in this genre include “A Dog Swap, “March at Sunset,” and “The Wedding Breakfast.” His painting, “Furling the Flag,” based on the surrender at the end of the Civil War, is displayed at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He also painted a number of prized landscapes based on the scenery around Warrenton.
In 1882, Richard painted the flag presented to the Warrenton Rifles when they left for Yorktown to participate in the Centennial Celebration of the British defeat that ended the Revolutionary War.
He was present on Courthouse Square on the night of Nov. 15, 1889, when Gen. Billy Mahone was burned in effigy following his defeat by Fitzhugh Lee in the state governor’s race. The fire spread to the pillars and eaves of the courthouse, and the courthouse was set ablaze.
Richard, John Carter and Eppa Hunton Jr. entered the burning building, and removed the portrait of John Marshall from its frame and brought it to safety, the second time the portrait was saved from a burning Fauquier County Courthouse.
Known as a devout Christian, Richard led ecumenical mission meetings held at the courthouse on Sundays, and “attendants enjoyed both his exhilaration to holier life, and the instrumental and vocal music,” wrote Lee Moffett in “The Diary of Courthouse Square.”
Enjoying his work in Warrenton, in 1899 he rented an unused room in the Town Hall for an art gallery for $2 a month. Shortly afterward, he built a summer studio in Warrenton.
Sadly, his studio and a number of his artworks were lost in the Great Fire of 1909. The loss was estimated at $2,000 for the building and $25,000 for the paintings and was only partially insured. In comparison, the loss of the new, two-story Municipal Building on Courthouse Square was estimated at only $2,500.
Given the beauty and range of Richard’s surviving paintings, one can only imagine what was lost. We will never know.
For the next 11 years, Brooke enjoyed painting, traveling and teaching. He died on April 25, 1920, and is buried in the Warrenton Cemetery next to his parents and younger sister, Annie Amelia Brooke (1858-1876).
“Richard Norris Brooke was one who painted for the sheer love of expression, and found endless delight in the beauty of nature,” according to a commemorative article appearing in the Washington Star newspaper on May 2, 1920.
“He was an excellent and ardent teacher and was regarded as a boon companion and much beloved by his pupils at the Corcoran Gallery, and earlier at the Art Students league, as well as his summer classes. He will not only be mourned, but missed; his passing leaves a gap in the ranks which will be hard to fill.”
