Grafton Tyler Brown

Grafton Tyler Brown (February 22, 1841 – March 2, 1918) was an American painter, lithographer and cartographer. Brown was the first African-American artist to create works depicting the Pacific Northwest and California.

Early life and education He was born on February 22, 1841, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His father was a freedman and was involved in the abolitionist movement. Brown worked for a printer in Philadelphia when he was fourteen. It was there where he learned the skill of lithography.

Career Grafton Tyler Brown, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, 1886, 1886. Brooklyn Museum, 2012.92 Brown moved to Sacramento in 1858 and worked as a hotel steward and porter where his artistic skills were first publicly noticed, with the Sacramento Union calling out Grafton Brown’s "good painting" of the British steamship Great Eastern. Shortly thereafter he moved to San Francisco Economic activity in California that was supported by mining activity led to Brown creating advertisements, maps, and scrip for a range of clients throughout the 1870s. In 1878 he created The Illustrated History of San Francisco, which consisted of 72 topographical images of the city.

In 1893, Brown moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota. In St. Paul he worked again as a draftsman, this time for the United States Army Corps of Engineers and for the city of St. Paul's engineering department. He died in St. Peter, Minnesota, on March 2, 1918. Oakland Museum of California, Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Notable exhibitions Blacks in the Westward Movement, 1975, Anacostia Community Museum Grafton Tyler Brown: Visualizing California and the Pacific Northwest, California African American Museum and Walters Art Museum