Richard Browne (painter)

Richard Browne (1771 – 11 January 1824) was an artist and illustrator who was transported from his native Ireland to what was then the colony of New South Wales, Australia.

After his sentence was completed in Newcastle in 1817 he lived in Sydney selling watercolour illustrations of natural history subjects — particularly birds — and of Indigenous Australians.

During this period he married, or formed a liaison with, fellow convict Sarah Coates who had been transported in the Wanstead in 1814.

Skottowe was interested in natural history and commissioned Browne to create drawings of his collections to illustrate a manuscript entitled, Select Specimens From Nature of the / Birds Animals &c &c of New South Wales, Collected and Arranged by Thomas Skottowe Esqr.

[2] In these illustrations Browne employed a more exaggerated caricature style which owed much to the silhouette portrait tradition.