Page 273 - Eye of the beholder

Mather was a proud, frugal and independent minded painter of portraits and history subjects. Today his name brings to mind few works, yet at the height of his career in 1790 he as an internationally well known American born artist. The period of prominence was brief, however, and time has left him to languish in obscurity. The reason for this is that the bulk of Brown’s works has remained in England, where he painted and therefore, for the most part outside the realm of historians of American art.
Like many artist before him, Brown was lured in 1781 to London from colonial America by the anticipation of artistic success there. After his arrival, his career unfolded in a storybook fashion. He studied with Benjamin west and found opportunity to paint portraits of Americans in London including notable images of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Charles Bullfinch. In the next ten years commissions increased as did the importance of his sitters. But Brown was equally torn between the profitability of portraiture and the prestige of history painting. Nevertheless his success with portrait painting had resulted in giving him a good life with a palatial home in London, received positive reviews of his works in the London press and in 1789 retained an enviable list of patrons. Few predicted how quickly this would vanish.
The major deterrent to Brown’s continuous success was his failure to be accepted by the Royal Academy of Art. After repeatedly trying from 1792 to 1795 he gave up. A falling off of patronage in the mid-1790s, and failure to be elected to the Royal Academy, led Brown to leave London in 1808 for Bath, Bristol, and Liverpool. He settled in Manchester, returning to London almost two decades later, in 1824, where, even after West's death, he continued to imitate his teacher's style of painting. Brown died in London in 1831.
This is a large oil painting, which has the representation of Tipu Sultan, son of Haider Ali, who had become a heroic legend in England. He was the only native Indian Ruler who successfully had resisted the advances of the British East India Company thrice in the Anglo-Mysore wars. As a result, Tipu had developed an aura of sorts in the English popular imagination.
This painting depicts the pinnacle scene of the end of the third Mysore war that ended with the Battle of Seringapatnam on the 18th March 1792. The war had by then had been continuing for more than two years, having broken out in 1789. Among the more draconian and dramatic conditions of the treaty was the requirement that Tipu hand over two of his three young sons to Cornwallis as a war hostage. The treaty concluding ceremony which was executed with great fanfare was commemorated in painting by Robert Home who was present in person on the occasion.
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