The landscape artistry of early African-American artist Grafton Tyler Brown comes alive in this fascinating traveling exhibition from the California African American Museum at the California Historical Society.

Curated by Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins, Ph.D., Grafton Tyler Brown:Visualizing California and the Pacific Northwest examines the works of San Francisco cartographer, lithographer and painter, Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918) who participated in changing the face of the West, especially the San Francisco Bay area.  Dr. LeFalle-Collins writes, “When we think of western painting, we often envision wagon trains steaming across the plains, unaware of the watchful eye of resident Indians, or images of hunters and trappers as they slaughter the seemingly unending herds of buffalo.  But Brown’s paintings highlight the virtues of the western landscape itself and demonstrates his philosophical shift from lithographer/cartographer in support of expansionism to a painter interested in preserving the unspoiled wilderness areas. As a young lithographer, Brown was one of many black Americans of the gold rush generation who migrated west in search of individual freedom, greater economic opportunity and reduced prejudice.  He was specifically lured West to continue his trade of lithography in the booming economy based on the profits from the gold and silver mines.

After working for lithographer C.C. Kuchel, Brown eventually assumed Kuchel’s business upon his death and created G.T. Brown & Co.  This company printed stock certificates such as the

Wells Fargo Mining Co., which features a similar type of stagecoach that is a signature piece for Wells Fargo Bank today.  His largest and most celebrated lithography project was The Illustrated History of San Mateo County, published by Moore and DePue in 1878.  This work consisted of seventy-two views of ranches and towns in San Mateo County.  The views were finely drawn for exactness and recognizability.  They emphasized the ordering of the landscape through architecture and enclosures.  They represented, in addition, the taming of the wilderness through the felling of hundreds of trees and the clearing of the land for future development.

Brown left San Francisco for Canada in 1882, joining the Amos Boman geological survey party in the Cariboo country. Once in Canada, Brown opened a painting studio in Victoria and defined himself as a painter while continuing to secure contracts for his lithographic business in San Francisco.  He actively advertised himself as a landscape artist, painting over twenty-two views of Victorian locales.  As a painter, Brown focused on well-known locales in the Pacific Northwest such as Mount Tacoma and moving eastward views of Yellowstone.  These paintings marked an important career shift, as well as a change in Brown’s philosophical attitude, which became progressively

apparent in his work.  In his landscapes of this period, his paintings celebrated a West which had not yet been sold, and in many paintings, a West that was being preserved through government

intervention aided by the many professional artists who journeyed into the wilderness to educate the public about its unspoiled beauty.  It seems that Brown’s emphasis changed from that of expansionism for commercial purposes to preservation and conservation of an impending loss of the frontier. Brown painted the land itself creating a transporting effect, taking us back to the mid-to-late nineteenth century in the Pacific Northwest with a sense of nostalgia for the landscape that must have been breathtakingly open and beautiful.  In following Brown’s life, we gain insight into how it might have been possible for this African American businessman turned painter to maneuver his way through the pioneer society that continued to promote racist exclusionism.  We also gain insight into his definition and redefinition of himself as his world expanded, as well as how the act of painting the landscape changed the course of his work and the way that he visualized the West.”

The exhibition contains 50 paintings and lithographs and examines mid-to-late nineteenth century lithography and painting as they depict westward expansion and settlement and preservation and conservation of the beauty and bounty of western landscape.

This exhibition was made possible by contributions from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bank of America Foundation and Wells Fargo Foundation. It has appeared nationally in Los Angeles at the California African American Museum, the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma, and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.