The Night Journey - Drip Painting

In Byron Browne's "The Night Journey", 1947, Picasso meets Jackson Pollock. Brown strikes a balance between fanciful representation and gestural abstraction. Adding to his brush-to-canvas paint application, he overlays a rhythmic Automatism-like Dip Painting technique. The dripping paint from a stick or can dances on large areas of the canvas, but it is not an all-over pattern. It is also not the main focus of the painting, and it is not done on a monumental scale. That being said, Browne, in 1947, clearly used the same dip technique that Pollock used for his seminal modern art breakthrough. See Jackson Pollack, "Full Fathom Five, 1947.
Unlined canvas. Minor 3-inch vertical repair to the canvas in the upper right corner, with accompanying craquelure recto. Mild frame abrasion in the upper left corner, most noticeable under close inspection. A tiny fleck of loss along the bottom edge, noticeable under close examination.
Framed Dimensions 38.25 X 34.5 Inches - otherwise presents very well and quite good condition. Best viewed with a top key light to bring out the dreamy colors.

George Byron Browne, who later dropped his first name, is considered among the leaders of the American avant-garde movement of the 1930s and 1940s alongside Ilya Bolotowsky, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de Kooning. Although Browne’s work is stylistically abstract, his imagery and references are taken from everyday life, nature, and art history. In fact, Browne was initially trained in a classical academic style; he once remarked, “There cannot be a new art without a solid basis in the understanding of past art.” In the 1930s, Browne’s painting reflected a strong European modernist influence, with particular affinities to the work of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Joan Miró. Browne’s style became more gestural in response to the emergence of abstract expressionism in the 1950s. The painter was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists, a group dedicated to the public promotion of abstract art.