Howard Vachel Brown was born on July 5, 1878 near to Lexington, Kentucky.
In 1902 he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 1906 he moved to New York City and started to work as a freelance illustrator. His art studio was at 131 West 23rd Street. He took classes at the Art Students League. He sold interior story illustrations to Broadway Magazine, Pearson's Magazine, Munsey's Magazine, People's Home Journal, St. Nicholas magazine, and Scientific American, and other popular technical magazines.
In 1910 he was hired to teach at the Fawcett School of Industrial Arts in Newark, New Jersey, where he met and married his wife, Pearl P. Brown, a public school teacher. They moved to 178 Plane Street in Newark, where they raised their daughter, Margaret.
During the World War he was employed as a camouflage artist by the United States Shipping Board. During his registration for the draft he was recorded to be medium built (165 lbs.), medium height, (5'-7") with dark hair, brown eyes, and a hearing disability.
He sold his first freelance pulp covers to Munsey Publication's Argosy All-Story Weekly, as well as Street & Smith's The Popular Magazine, Excitement, and High Spot Magazine. He sold covers to Science and Invention, Astounding Stories, Startling Stories, and Thrilling Wonder Stories.
He seldom signed his work.
According to the 1939 editor of Thrilling Wonder, Mort Weisinger, "Howard V. Brown traveled extensively in South America, Venezuela, British and French Guiana, Martinique, and the small spots of the Windward islands. Travel helps him to relax, also familiarizes him with exotic local color. Howard Brown's two hobbies are microscopy and petrology."
During World War Two he is recorded to have lived with Mary T. Brown at Stony Brook Road, Montville, New Jersey. Their mailing address was a post office box in Towaco, NJ. He still rented his New York City art studio at 131 West 23rd Street in Manhattan.
Howard V. Brown died at age 67 in 1945.
© David Saunders 2009 |
