Peasant Girl at Market

Costume Study, Genre: Women, Women: Occupational

Dimensions

Image Dimensions: 25.3 x 20.2 cm dry or glue-mounted to thin card
Support Dimensions: 25.3 x 20.2 cm

Peasant Girl at Market, the name of this photograph assigned by this archive, shows a staged genre scene of a young woman model wearing peasant clothing in a market setting, most likely taken in California.

Charles H. Brown, (b. 1873 ?) a commercial photographer from Santa Barbara, California, was an active exhibitor in the annual Pittsburgh (Photographic) Salons as early as 1920, with mentions of his name in photographic journals of the day through the 1927 exhibition.  The following review of an interior portrait by Brown appeared in the July, 1921 issue of American Photography:

The portrait of “Betty Kid,” by Charles H.Brown, was one of the most pleasing portraits in the 1920 Pittsburgh Salon. The maker has secured a most excellent pose and has arranged his accessories very pleasingly to break up the background space. The contrasts of light and dark are very effective. The whole pose expresses a certain aloofness to which both the lifted chin and the hand on the hip contribute notably. (p. 403)

1922: “Study of a Young Girl” by Brown published as a full-page halftone in the annual Pictorial Photography in America.

1926: Camera Craft: May issue: “Charles H. Brown of Santa Barbara again sends us strong portrait studies. His “Sr. Lopez” stands out as one of the most forceful character studies on the walls.” excerpt: The Pittsburgh Salon 1926 by Byron H. Chatto

1927: Camera Craft: January issue: “Charles H. Brown of Santa Barbara offers a treat in his two portraits. They are by far the best of that sort of thing shown by any American and carry the sincerity and freedom from stunt and spectacular effort which one looks for from the English masters. Understand me, they are not imitations of any foreign work, they are classic.” : Sigismund Blumann: “The Western Pictorialists As Judged by Their Salon Exhibits in San Francisco”. p. 3

1927: Camera Craft: June issue: “To Love-It is Everything,” that much reproduced picture by Charles H. Brown of Los Angeles is as strong artistically as it is pleasing. It is an easy matter to wax romantic gazing at this print, in fact difficult not to”. excerpt: The Pittsburgh Salon by Ralph B. Bonwit: p. 260

print notes recto: signed in black ink script to lower right corner:

Charles H. Brown
Santa Barbara