Artist and art patron Rosamond Brown and her son, gallerist Ben Brown, reflect on how Hong Kong’s art scene has changed over the past 50 years and discuss a fund they’ve created to support M+
When Rosamond Brown moved to Hong Kong in 1964, she didn’t set out to become one the city’s most prominent art patrons. She slipped into the role as if it simply were the thing to do. That she was only 26, and a painter herself, was no matter.
“My husband Charles and I used to go to shows, which were mostly held in the New Territories, and purchase works we found interesting,” she recalls, speaking on the phone from London, where she currently spends part of her time. “We felt we ought to do our part in helping artists, all the more because I myself was one. But there was no grand plan behind it. We bought the pieces and hung them on the walls of our house.”
A few months after her arrival, Rosamond held a debut solo show at the Chatham Gallery, one of Hong Kong’s first commercial galleries. She presented a second one in 1966. She also began frequenting a now-closed cafe at City Hall, where local artists met regularly to exchange and discuss ideas. Here, she became acquainted with fellow painters Hon Chi-fun, Gaylord Chan and Cheung Yee, for whom she used to order acrylic paint, which at the time could only be shipped from America, in exchange for lessons on how to use a Chinese brush.
“I felt incredibly lucky to be surrounded by such great minds,” she says. “They stimulated me both personally and professionally.”
Exploring Hong Kong's Art Scene
Soon after she arrived in Hong Kong, Rosamond’s own art—mostly large, meditative landscapes that were partly inspired by western abstract expressionism and colour theory—started showing some of the techniques used by her peers, from elements of Zen to calligraphic precision. Hong Kong, too, became a key source of inspiration. “The scenery, the mountains, the mist, the city itself—it all influenced me enormously, as did China,” she says.
These places guided much of her ensuing career, as she went on to show at the Hong Kong Arts Centre’s inaugural exhibition in 1977 and, one year later, at the British Embassy in Beijing, in the first show of contemporary western art in post-Cultural Revolution China. From then on, she played a key role in the development of the arts scene in Hong Kong.
“Over the decades, I’ve seen the art sector coming into its own, but also struggling with a number of challenges,” she says. “Hong Kong has always been a hard place for artists. The spaces to work are small, the rents prohibitive. Nonetheless, art makers have continued to produce great works.” And she’s continued to support them, both by collecting and making her house at 5 Pollock’s Path on The Peak—which she sold last year after having lived there for over 50 years—a gathering ground for the creative crowd, among them artists, journalists and architects (Charles, Rosamond’s late husband, was an architect).
See also: 11 Gallerists Who Changed The Art Scene In Hong Kong