These early works have a moving poignancy, both in their subject matter and the expressive modelling. Many of these pieces arose after a period working as a student in Paris in 1953.

Paris in the 1950s was an exciting melting pot for artists who were enjoying a post-war freedom to experiment with expression. While in Paris, Brown met many notable sculptors including Germaine Richier and Alberto Giacometti, and spent five months at l'Académie de la Grande Chaumiére in the atélier of Russian cubist sculptor Ossip Zadkine. Brown also enjoyed both formal and clandestine viewings of Auguste Rodin’s plaster reserves at the Meudon studio, later writing his published RCA thesis on Rodin and Medardo Rosso.
 

'A classic artist modelling a figure tries to establish the noblest common denominator. Brown does the opposite; it is the particular, the personally asymmetrical, the unique that is sacred to him.'
             John Berger,  New Statesman,  17 September 1955.