SELECT SOLD
Grafton Tyler Brown was born on February 22, 1841 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was an illustrator, painter and lithographer and is known as the first African American artist to depict California and the Pacific Northwest.
Brown’s father was a freedman and was involved in the abolitionist movement. At fourteen years of age, Brown began working as a printer and learning lithography. He moved to San Francisco in 1855 and worked for the Kuchel & Dresel Company which specialized in lithographic views of mining scenes and Californian towns. He also produced most of the pictures for The Illustrated History of San Mateo County.
In 1861, Brown began his own lithography business, G.T. Brown & Co. and it remained active until 1879 when he sold the business. During this time, he created The Illustrated History of San Francisco, which contained seventy-two topographical images of the city. His works often depicted settlements, property sales, claims and city boundaries in the Bay Area and Nevada Territory.
In 1881, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia as a member of the Amos Bowman Geological Survey where he served as the expedition artist. The project was organized by the Canadian Government to map and record the natural landscape east of the Cascade Mountains along the Fraser River. In 1883, Brown exhibited twenty-two works of local landscapes based on the sketches from the Survey, including Entrance to the Harbour Victoria (#4), Thunder Storm on Shuswap Lake (#15), and Giant’s Castle Mountain (#22).
In 1884 Brown moved back to the United States and travelled throughout the West Coast including Mt. Rainier, Yosemite and Yellowstone National Park. Brown lived in Portland, Oregon from 1886-89 where he had his own studio. He was also a member of the Portland Art Club. He spent the last 25 years in St. Paul, Minnesota where he worked primarily as a draftsman and civil engineer. Brown passed away in St. Peter on March 2nd, 1918. His works are held in the collections of the Royal BC Museum and Archives, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Oakland Museum of California, Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2017 a retrospective of Brown’s work was held at the University of Victoria’s Legacy Art Gallery.