Brown, Pieter Irwin (1903 - ?)

Born in Rotterdam in 1903 to a Dutch father and an Irish mother, Brown attended the school of arts in Rotterdam, then studied design for interior decoration and glass. In 1921, he entered the Royal Academy in Amsterdam and in 1923 began traveling throughout Europe and Africa. He moved to London in 1925, and after three months in Egypt in 1932, he headed to Indonesia. In 1934 he traveled throughout Asia, then settled in Kyoto. In 1935, the famous publisher Shozaburo Watanbe purchased a number of drawings from Brown. Watanabe then used the drawings as designs for woodblock prints. Brown left Japan in 1940. Exhibitions of his works were held in Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Kyoto and Honolulu. The Los Angeles County Museum exhibited his woodblock prints in 1946, where Brown was living at the time. He then moved to New York, and information about his life after that time, and the year of his death, remain unknown.

It would appear that only small quantities of his prints were produced by Watanabe, as examples are scarce.