Rosamond Brown is a British born and trained artist that was instrumental in introducing modern and contemporary Western art in Hong Kong starting in the late 60's, a legacy that is continued today by her son, gallery owner Ben Brown.

 

The artist was born in England in 1934, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts at Belgrade University in Yugoslavia (now Serbia) in 1958, continued on to London's Central School of Art and Design and arrived in 1964 in Hong Kong with her husband, Charles. She came, she says, with two suitcases and three paintbrushes; but her greatest practical asset was her knowledge (gleaned at Harvard, where she took an art course while Charles finished his architectural studies) of acrylic paint. Hearing this, an American painter friend, Sheila Isham, took her down to City Hall shortly after she arrived to meet the Hong Kong artists who gathered in its coffee shop every week, and were eager, in this humid climate, to discover acrylic's possibilities for themselves while they showed her how to use a Chinese brush. That circle included Hon Chi-fun, Gaylord Chan and Cheung Yee.