Harrison Paul Brown was born in Waterloo, Indiana, in June of 1889.   He studied art at the University of Illinois for one year and was a 1912 graduate of the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts where he studied under B.J.O. Nordfelt.  He was also a student at the Ox-Bow School in Saugatuck, Michigan, possibly as early as 1910.  After graduation he took a job as supervisor of art and manual training at Berwyn, Illinois, and from 1913 to 1919 taught manual arts, mainly woodworking in Indianapolis Public Schools.  He assisted in the organization of the Indiana Artists Club and painted and exhibited in Cincinnati, Ohio.

By 1920 Brown and his family – he had married Ruth N. Santa in June of 1917 – had moved to Michigan.  The Harrison Brown Gown Shop in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, failed during the depression and he worked at several odd jobs finishing his art career as the assistant buy in the fine arts department of the J.L. Hudson Company in Detroit.

Source:
Biographical information from the exhibition: Painting the Town; A History of Art in Saugatuck and Douglas, The Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society, Douglas, Michigan.  1997