The term
a brown study was used in a book I was reading a couple of days ago. It seemed like a new phrase to me - or perhaps I had read it before and was able to construe its meaning, therefore not bothering to look it up.
This painting by John George Brown,
Woman Seated At Window - 1872" would seem to me perfectly illustrate a brown study: "daydreaming or deeply contemplative, an intense melancholy reverie".
The term dates from the sixteenth century and while used in novels by authors such as Dickens, Doyle and Alcott, it eventually fell out of the popular vernacular.
I've always favored the color brown. All my life I have been contemplative. One of my high school senior picture poses could have been
a brown study without me even being aware.
My eyes, hair and sweater were all brown and I was trying to look pensive. I wonder.....could I have know that term then and forgotten it over the years?
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