Anna Wood Brown was an American painter born in Westchester in 1863. She attended Pratt Institute, from which she graduated in 1893 with a certificate as an art teacher. Her works even before graduation were featured in exhibitions in New York. Soon after graduation she travelled to France, where she appears to have done most of her painting over the next decade or so. Her works are often compared to those of the better-known American artist Mary Cassatt.
Her work was included in a major exhibition at the Huntington Museum in 1985 entitled “Five Women Who Pioneered Impressionism in America”. The show collated together works from Lilla Cabot Perry, Lilian Westcott Hale, May Wilson Preston, Anna Wood Brown and Jane Peterson – a large majority of the work was loaned by the Hirschl and Adler Galleries in New York who pay special attention to American female painters of the period.
Anna Brown exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants in Paris from 1909 and at the Salon d’Automne from 1920.She also exhibited in New York at the Academy of Design, Nov 1891. “Loveliness,” and “An Old-Fashioned Garden.”
She was a member of The Woman’s Art Club of New York.
Her work is held in numerous museums and private collections.
