Jennie Augusta Brownscombe (December 10, 1850 – August 5, 1936) was an American painter, designer, etcher, commercial artist, and illustrator.

She made genre paintings, including revolutionary and colonial American history, most notably The First Thanksgiving held at Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

[6] During her life, Jennie Brownscombe was an active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Mayflower Descendants[3] and the Historic and Scenic Preservation Society.

[7] After her father's death in 1868, Brownscombe earned a living teaching[4][5] high school in Honesdale[8] and creating book and magazine illustrations,[4][5] which were inspired by the streams and fields around her home and nearby Irving Cliff.

"[10][11] When he died, Hall left his home and property in the Catskills to Brownscombe,[12] including the painting "Danaë and the Golden Shower" by John Smibert.

"[11] As educational opportunities were made more available in the 19th century, women artists became part of professional enterprises, including founding their own art associations.

[21] Artists "played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplyfying this emerging type through their own lives."

Brownscombe's work expressed a sentimental viewpoint, as in Love's Young Dream and a feminine perspective is evident in The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth which depicts a woman in the foreground with her two children.

[10] In Love's Young Dream, Brownscombe depicts a mother looking on with fond interest at a woman whose attention is transfixed towards an approaching man on horseback, her father intent on his reading.

"Brownscombe contrasts the right-hand side of the picture, where all three figures have been placed, with the left, where an unencumbered view of the landscape stretches back to mist-shrouded hills.

"[18] Washington Post art critic Paul Richard commented that the 1887 painting of a young woman, with childhood behind her, yearns for making a home with a man, rather than a career.

Other artists included Howard Pyle, Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, Henry Alexander Ogden, Edward Percy Moran, and John Ward Dunsmore.

Their works, inspired by earlier artwork and George Washington biographies, were publicized in color in books, magazines, calendars and other commercial products, utilizing contemporary advances in lithographic printing.

She painted scenes of Dolley Madison hosting a ball, the Liberty Bell being rung by a man, and Betsy Ross sewing the American flag.

[10] The First Thanksgiving,1914, depicts the historic event when colonialists and Native Americans, led by Massasoit, gathered in 1621 to celebrate the bounty of their first harvest in accordance with an English tradition.

"[30] In the 1920s she made portraits of federal Circuit Court of Appeals judges,[8] Rutgers University trustee William Hopkins Leupp and Flushing Hospital physician and distant relative Dr. Charles Story.

[10] Brownscombe created illustrations for Harpers Weekly, Scribner and Pauline Bouvé's Tales of the Mayflower Children, which was published in 1927.