Brown, Nicholas III (1792-1859)
Role:Dates:
Portrait Location: Annmary Brown Memorial
Artist: Ingham, Charles Cromwell (1796 - 1863)
Portrait Date:
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Dimensions: 24 1/2
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Brown Portrait Number: 86
Brown Historical Property Number: 2245
This Nicholas Brown was the third in the family to bear that name. He was also son of Nicholas Brown, Jr., Brown University's famous benefactor (after whom the university is named). Born in 1792, he graduated from Brown in 1811, and went on to a career in politics. President James Polk appointed him United States Consul to Italy, where he spent nine years (1845-1853). In 1856, he was elected to the position of Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island. He died in Troy, New York, in 1859. While in Providence, Nicholas Brown lived in the double brick house (called Horace Mann Hall) at George and Prospect Streets, now a part of the Brown University Campus.
Nicholas Brown is especially notable as the father of Annmary Brown Hawkins, in whose memory General Rush Christopher Hawkins erected the building which bears her name, and as the father of Carrie Mathilde Brown Bajnotti, whose similarly grieving husband endowed the construction of Carrie Tower on the Brown University Campus and the Carrie Foundation in downtown Providence.
Charles Cromwell Ingham was born in 1796, in Dublin, Ireland, and immigrated to the United States in 1817. He established a very fashionable studio in New York City. He was sought as a portrait painter and miniaturist, and is best known for his flattering forays into female portraiture. He is known to have painted at least seven portraits of Brown family members, including a group portrait still owned by the family.