Grafton Tyler Brown

Grafton Tyler Brown

American, 1841–1918

ActiveCalifornia, United States

Birth placeHarrisburg, Pennsylvania, United States

Death placeSaint Peter, Minnesota, United States

BiographyA prolific and talented topographic artist, lithographer, and landscape painter, Grafton Tyler Brown traveled the West in the late 19th century, and his resulting art depicts the natural beauty and essential character of the developing frontier.

Brown was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1841, and left the East and moved to San Francisco in 1855, where he became California's first Black artist. He spent his time producing maps, illustrations and lithographs of towns so accurate they were often used as office documents. In addition to drawing views of Virginia City, Nevada, Ft. Churchill, and Santa Rosa, California, he published an Illustrated History of San Mateo County.

From 1861 to 1867, he worked as a lithographer for Kuchel and Dresel in San Francisco, establishing his own business, G.T. Brown & Company, upon his employer's death in 1867. Large mining companies were among his clients, as were local businessmen who advertised their firms on the borders of his bird's eye views of cities.

In the early 1870s Brown moved to Victoria, B.C. to work on a geographical survey for the Canadian government with Amos Boman. The move north to Canada from San Francisco is concurrent with Brown's move from commercial lithographer to landscape painter.

Brown's first exhibition in Victoria in 1883 included 22 local landscapes. His experience drawing plein air helped prepare Brown to paint the Smith and Thompson rivers, Lake Okanagan, and Mt. Baker. In subsequent years Brown traveled throughout the West painting landscapes.

He went to Washington, where he painted several views of Mt. Rainier; to Oregon, where he lived and worked in Portland from 1886-1889, to Wyoming, where he painted Yellowstone's Lower Falls in 1891; and back to California where he painted scenes of Yosemite National Park.

Though it appeared that Brown had adopted the West as his home, he moved to St. Paul, Minnesota in 1892 where he began work as a draftsman and civil engineer. This was to last for the remaining 25 years of his life, and no works of art from these years have been found.

Brown died in St. Peter, Minnesota in 1918.

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