Peleg Franklin Brownell was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He studied first at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, then Paris’ Académie Julian. [1]

While in Paris, Brownell met William Brymner and was recruited as Headmaster of the Ottawa School of Art in 1887. [2] In Ottawa, he would subsequently head up the Women’s Art Association of Ottawa (later the Ottawa Art Association). He would make our nation’s capital his home until his death in 1946.

Brownell was a founding member of the Canadian Art Club and exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy and the Ontario Society of Artists. Brownell also showed internationally at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, the 1900 Paris World's Fair,  the 1904 Louisiana Purchase (World's Fair) Exhibition in St. Louis, and the British Empire Exhibitions, 1924 and 1925 in Wembley. [3]

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Footnotes: 

[1] Robert J. Lamb, The Canadian Art Club : 1907 - 1915 (Edmonton: Edmonton Art Gallery, 1988), 74.

[2]National Gallery of Canada, The Photographer, 1896, https://www.gallery.ca/collection/artwork/the-photographer.;   Jim Burant notes that, “It is not certain how he was recommended for a position at the Ottawa School of Art.  He may have kept in touch with fellow students from his Paris days, including William Brymner who, returning to Canada in the winter of 1880, had become the Ottawa School of Art’s first headmaster.” Jim Burant, “Peleg Franklin Brownell and the Fine Arts in Ottawa”, North by South: The Art of Peleg Franklin Brownell (Ottawa: Ottawa Art Gallery, 1998), 20.

[3] He was awarded a bronze medal for his R.C.A. diploma work, The Photographer, 1896, Oil on canvas, 61.2 x 51.2 cm., which is now in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa (Access. No. 126).