Grafton Tyler Brown

born Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1841; died Saint Peter, Minnesota, 1918

BiographyGrafton Tyler Brown was a cartographer, lithographer, and painter. Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1841, Brown learned lithography in Philadelphia and then sought better economic and social opportunities in the West. Brown migrated to San Francisco in the mid-1850s, during the Gold Rush era where he found work as a lithographer eventually establishing his own business. In 1872 he sold the business to devote his time to traveling and painting. He settled first in Victoria, British Columbia, using it as a home base from which to travel throughout the Pacific Northwest. In 1886 he moved to Portland, Oregon where he became a member of the Portland Art Society and opened his own studio. He also traveled to Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks to paint. He left Portland for Helena, Montana in 1890 then eventually relocated to St. Paul, Minnesota where he remained the rest of his life.

Over the course of his career, Brown’s work changed from a commercial focus to fine art. Primarily self-taught, he honed his skills as a painter by looking closely at and copying other landscape artists. He brought the careful attention to detail that he’d learned as a draughtsman to his paintings as evidenced in the geological and environmental elements of his landscape images. There are looser passages in Brown’s work as well that showcase his fluent brushwork and sense of color.

Brown’s works can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Oakland Museum of California, and Washington State History Museum. The first retrospective exhibition on the artist "Grafton Tyler Brown: Visualizing California and the Pacific Northwest" curated by Dr. Lizetta LaFalle-Collins, was presented by the California African American Museum, Los Angeles in 2003. It then traveled to Baltimore, San Francisco, and Tacoma.

Person TypeIndividual

Terms