Curling;—a Scottish Game, at Central Park

John George Brown specialized in genre painting, creating scenes of everyday, middle-class life. While most genre paintings relied on stereotypes to convey a story, this painting unusually depicts actual people and a real event. Commissioned by Robert Gordon, a Scottish immigrant and member of the St. Andrews Curling Club in New York, Brown’s painting focuses on a new, popular sport among middle-class men in America: curling. Described as “the great game of stone and broom,” curling became a feature of the city’s famed Central Park during the winter, and the results of games were reported in the local papers.