W. Staples Drown, Old Spanish House, St. George Street, St. Augustine, Fla. 1890. Oil on canvas, 14 by 18 inches.
William Staples Drown, from Providence, Rhode Island, was primarily a mural and landscape painter, known for his scenes of streets, farms, orchards, lakes, coastal views, and country cottages. Drown’s father, a minister, lived in St. Augustine. Staples Drown first arrived in St. Augustine in 1885, placing a full page advertisement in the St. Augustine City Directory, seeking pupils interested in painting instruction. Later when Henry Flagler built the Ponce deLeon Hotel, Drown was one of the first artists to open a studio there, in January 1888.
The St. Augustine Tatler, January 14, 1892: “Mr. W. Staples Drown, the ideal looking artist of them all, has returned and is busy putting his studio in order that he may show the public what he has been doing during the past summer. Mr. M. J. Heade has a Drown in his home, on San Marco Avenue, that is particularly good. It is a marine off Anastasia.” A week later on January 23, the Tatler continued: “Mr. Drown, an artist thoroughly identified with this city, and whose pictures have familiarized the quaint streets, the picturesque houses and pretty bits of the bay, sea wall and old fort to hundreds of persons who have never been here, has just returned from a summer and autumn visit to Venice….” The January 20, 1894 issue of the Tattler records: “Mr. Drown has made a special study of quaint and picturesque bits about this city and the bay, imparting to the old Spanish architecture a foreign air very charming.”
The Tatler, February 29, 1896 comments: “Mr. William Staples Drown occupies number three (studio on Artists Row) and shows a number of picture of Florida scenery in water and oil. He spent several weeks at Ormond, and has pretty bits of that spot as well as sketches of the Tomoka, the palmetto tree, especially, in evidence in its distinctive beauty. Mr. Drown made many of his oil sketches exactly from nature, thus securing excellent light and shade effect. He has, too, a number of bits of Florida in watercolors; these, in a high key, excellent in drawing. Mr. Drown has been most happy in his bits of St. Augustine. His street scenes, city gates, marines, with fort and light house, are delightful souvenirs of a visit to the city to be enjoyed for years to come.” In 1900 the St. Augustine Tattler reported: “Mr. William Staples Drown who has been identified with St. Augustine so long he may very well be claimed as a St. Augustineite has returned from England and last week held a private exhibition of his summer’s work, at the Art Club, Providence, R.I….The exhibition closed with a tea Saturday afternoon. Mr. Drown will occupy his studio in the Studio Row some time in January, when the pictures remaining unsold will be exhibited.”
Born: 1856, Dorchester, Massachusetts.
Died: September 24, 1915, Providence, Rhode Island.
Education: With J. Appleton Clark, Boston; Venice; Paris.
Membership: Providence Art Club; Providence Watercolor Club.
Exhibits: Boston Art Club, 1880, 1881; Works, Whistler House Museum of Art; Essex Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.
Directory: Listed in the St. Augustine City Directory, 1885-1886, soliciting pupils in drawing and painting, with studio at the post office building; St. Augustine City Directory, 1893, as an artist.
