Bettie Brown oil painting?
Grains From The Sandbar
A very large oil painting on fabric is in the Two Rivers Heritage Foundation historical collection. It is unsigned, but significantly characteristic of similar paintings attributed to an artist with the common name of Bettie Brown.
However, if it can positively be attributed as the art of Bettie Brown, she was no common person. She was the heralded daughter, now dead, of James Moreau Brown, a wealthy early business devel-oper of Galveston and builder of the Ashton Villa home that is now a prominent Galveston Museum.
Sherrie S. Mc LeRoy, former curator of the Ashton Villa Museum in 1997, published a biography of Bettie Brown entitled “Daughter of Fortune, the Bettie Brown Story.”
In it, Mc LeRoy describes the life-long story of Brown: a life of vast spending and living, she’s sometimes described as “beautiful” and as “not a beauty.” She never married, frequently traveled world-wide, studied art at many European sites, had many prominent beaus, and a heroine at the time of the 1900 hurricane that destroyed Galveston but not the Ashton Villa that sat upon a hill, yet with a basement that partially filled with sand.
She was lavish in dress, social events, and in her later life a benefactor.
As to art, many of her paintings, usually done on corduroy, hang in the Ashton Villa Museum continuing to puzzle museum goers. Many of the paintings feature a fairy like woman as well as cherub faces. It is this feature that the painting in the Two Rivers Heritage Foundation’s collection reveals. Her work was rarely signed.
The history of why it is in a Navasota collection begins in the mid 1970’s when a group formed the Grimes County Heritage Association, not to be confused with the Grimes County Historical Commission. It was a time when renowned Georgia Best, daughter of early Grimes County settler Christian Becker, returned home to lead the Association.
First the Association was located in the P. A. Smith hotel until Roy Horlock donated the Horlock House to the group as a museum in Dec. 1981. It was then that many items were ‘accessioned’ to the Association at the Horlock Museum.
The donations vastly grew to include the donation in 1983 of this very large ‘Fairy’ painting. The Grimes County Heritage Association’s accession paper describes the painting as: “Large painting of fairy and 3 cherubs on corduroy, recognized by curator as only one artist who did this kind of work lived in Galveston. It belonged to Nan Isacah Horlock who lived and died in Alvin, Tx. She gave the picture to Louise Moore (Harry Moore’s widow of Navasota), who had it in a rental house. When Roy Horlock gave the Horlock House to GCHA, Mrs. Moore donated the painting to the GCHA. Nan Isacah Horlock married Mr. Rhoutt. The painting size 43” wide by 56” tall estimated 2.5” gilt frame, has three water stain marks in its lower section. Donor Mrs. Louise (Harry) Moore, deceased.”
In 1999 the Association disbanded and at that time gift deeded the Horlock House and the collection to the City of Navasota.
On May 7, 2014, the City of Navasota entered into an agreement with the Arts Council of the Brazos Valley for the Horlock House to become a six-month rotating center occupancy for ‘budding’ artists. The inherited City Collection was removed from the Horlock House and stored in the City Maintenance Building in the 200 block of Railroad Street. The Two Rivers Heritage Foundation was organized in the fall of 2014, and in the spring of 2016, was assigned management of The City Collection. At that time the collection was removed to climatic controlled locations, and, in an agreement with The City, became the Two Rivers collection in the summer of 2021.
During the time The City’s collection was stored in the maintenance building, about six inches of flood water entered the building. At that time the subject painting absorbed water damage. The Two Rivers Heritage Foundation since has it in safe keeping. The question begs — is it a renowned Bettie Brown painting? It definitely portrays similar Brown unsigned paintings as well as the same topic she used for the vast majority of her paintings on corduroy.
Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. See www.tworiversheritagefoundation.org for more information.