Sidney Brown

Sidney William Brown (born March 7, 1865, in Winterthur; died August 1, 1941 in Baden) was a Swiss machine designer and art collector. Life and Work Sidney Brown was born as one of six children of the British inventor Charles Brown and his wife Eugénie Pfau, who came from Winterthur. His older brother was the machine designer Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown. Like his brother, Sidney Brown studied mechanical engineering at the Winterthur Technical College and was one of the founding members of the Winterthur Velocipede Club during this time, of which he was the first president. After his studies, he then joined his father in 1884 at what was to become Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon. After his brother founded the company Brown, Boveri & Cie. together with Walter Boveri in 1891, Sidney Brown became technical director there and later a member of the board of directors. In 1896 Brown married the industrialist's daughter Jenny Sulzer. Their honeymoon took the couple to Paris, where they acquired Eugène Boudin's painting Laundresses. Their collection initially focused on painters of the Munich School such as Ludwig Herterich, Leo Putz and Franz von Stuck. Their villa Langmatt, built in Baden in 1901, received its own gallery extension for the painting collection in 1906. Until WWII, the Brown couple, advised by the painter Carl Montag, acquired paintings by the French Impressionists in Paris. The collection included paintings by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. They also acquired valuable furniture, porcelain, clocks, silver, and books. After the death of their son John A. Brown in 1987, the villa and its collections were placed in a foundation and have been open as a museum since 1990. Brown was buried in the family grave at Liebenfels cemetery in Baden AG.