The History of Brown
“Oh, come on! Nobody’s favourite color is BROWN!”
Brown
#964B00
Brown, derived from the Latin word “brown”(1), is defined as “any of a group of [colours] between red and yellow in hue, of medium to low lightness, and of moderate to low saturation”(2). From brownies, to tree trunks and mud, to the less savoury aspects of life, brown is a colour that surrounds and defines our world. But where did brown come from? What has led to its eminence, its effervescence, its simple warm tones? In this article, The Brown Homestead is happy to offer a short history of brown and its very, very important place in our world and society.
Brown is a naturally occurring colour that has been around for at least as long as we can remember. In fact, the colour brown may have been around even longer than that. Though historians have long believed that the world existed in black and white before 1939 (when colour T.V. was invented), this has more recently been challenged by academics (3). Contemporary chromatologists now contend that brown has been a major component of our world for so long that the first fish to step onto land even remarked on this wonderful colour, saying “wow, it [the land] sure is brown out here”(4). Of course, it didn’t mean it in a bad way. After all, what is not to like about the colour brown?
Art History
Ancient civilizations certainly agreed that brown is a good colour. Clay pigments have been used in paintings as far back as the prehistoric period, with cave paintings as old as 40,000 BCE (5). Most famously, the Lascaux cave in France includes approximately 17,300 year-old paintings of horses in one of their natural colours: brown. These cave paintings prove the longstanding influence of brown.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa
Brown has remained an important paint pigment throughout art history, and has been featured in Renaissance works such Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (c. 1503) and The Last Supper (c. 1495), Romanticism’s Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830), Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers (c. 1888), and even in more modernist paintings like Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory (1931), and Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans (1968). Indeed, it can be argued that without brown paint, many paintings that feature the colour would not exist.
Brown and Class History
Despite the positive associations with the colour brown, history always finds a way to create negativity. In the context of brown, this involves class relationships. In Ancient Rome and medieval Europe, lower classes were expected to wear brown as it symbolised the colour of humility and poverty (6). This is primarily because brown material was inexpensive to produce as brown is an abundant naturally occurring colour in textiles. Brown’s working class roots would even be immortalized in more recent works like John Steinback’s 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath.
Also associated with poverty: The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was primarily brown.
On the other hand, there is also an ivy league university named after the colour brown (Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island), so there are some upper class associations with the colour as well. Included in these associations are #Relatable celebrity Kim Kardashian’s fixation on beige (a derivative of brown), and the wide expanse of brown sandy beaches in Malibu, near Hollywood, which, surprisingly, does not have a beach (7). Brown can be seen bridging major class divides since its first use in 40,000 BCE.
The Brown Family
Reflecting on this long history of Brown, we now turn our attention to the Brown family, who settled The Brown Homestead around 1785. You may be wondering how the Brown family came to lay claim to the Brown name. Well, we are so glad you didn’t ask!
As discovered by family history researcher Liz Porritt, the Browns were originally known as the Greens before immigrating to North America from Germany (8). When the “Greens” moved north with the Loyalists to Canada, they were struck by the deeply beautiful, and brown landscape of the nation (it was late winter). In an act of deeply moving Canadian patriotism, the Greens changed their last name to Brown, and the rest is history! No, literally, it’s history, which is available at thebrownhomestead.ca in written and podcast form!
The John Brown House - also brown!
Conclusion
The colour brown is a lovely and intricate colour that has been omnipresent throughout the past. With both positive and negative associations, brown has a complicated history that is related to many important and vital things in the history of the world, and more locally, Niagara. As stewards to the past, and to all that is brown, we are pleased to act as a vital gateway to understanding things in our global history that are brown and important.
To draw this work to a close, do you know what else is brown and important? That’s right, the John Brown House here at The Brown Homestead! So if this short and incredibly academic article on the history of brown tickled your fancy, please share it on social media, tagging The Brown Homestead on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram! Afterall, a lot of very difficult and serious research went into this article.
And please, have a very happy April Fools’ Day!
(1) Google Translate
(2) “Brown,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2022, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brown
(3) See the works of Dr. Scarlett Black of Auburn University
(4) This probably didn’t happen, but it would have been lit, right? (4-1/2)
(4-1/2) Lit (adj) | cool, good, fun, Online Slang Dictionary, 2017, http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/lit
(5) Varichon, Couleurs – pigments et teintures dans les mains des peuples. p. 254
(6) Eva Heller, Psychologie de la couleur: Effets et symboliques. p. 219
(7) Seriously, we googled it and are just as shocked as you are!
(8) This is not true. We are lying.
(9) Does anyone read footnotes, anyway?