{"id":62116,"date":"2021-11-05T17:15:43","date_gmt":"2021-11-05T17:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=62116"},"modified":"2021-11-05T17:15:44","modified_gmt":"2021-11-05T17:15:44","slug":"review-grafton-tyler-browns-california-scenes-at-pasadena-museums-final-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=62116","title":{"rendered":"Review: Grafton Tyler Brown\u2019s California scenes at Pasadena museum\u2019s final show"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review: Grafton Tyler Brown\u2019s California scenes at Pasadena museum\u2019s final show<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Times<\/a>
\n2018-06-30<\/p>\n

Christopher Knight<\/strong><\/a>, Art Critic<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Grafton Tyler Brown<\/a>, \u201cCascade Cliffs, Columbia River,\u201d 1885, oil on canvas (Pasadena Museum of California Art<\/em>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1879, Grafton Tyler Brown<\/a> took a giant leap. A successful San Francisco<\/a> businessman, then 38, he decided to become a Western scene painter. Brown sold his thriving lithography<\/a> company and headed out to see the sights, brush in hand.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the next dozen years, he produced picturesque portraits of Mt. Shasta<\/a> and Mt. Rainier<\/a>, the Cascade Gorge along the Columbia River<\/a> and the geysers<\/a> of the newly anointed National Park at Yellowstone<\/a>. A sliver of what he saw on those wide-ranging travels is now on view in \u201cGrafton Tyler Brown: Exploring California,\u201d a modest exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two other Brown exhibitions have been done \u2014 the first at the Oakland Museum<\/a> in 1972, which focused on his commercial lithographs, and a 2003 survey of 49 paintings at the California African American Museum<\/a>. (The painting show traveled to Baltimore\u2019s<\/a> Walters Art Museum<\/a>.) One wishes that the Pasadena<\/a> show had managed a full overview of his entire output, lithographs and paintings alike. That\u2019s long overdue…<\/p>\n

…Much more deserves to be known about Brown, the first African American artist believed to have been working in 19th century California<\/a>. Light-skinned, he began to pass as white<\/a> sometime after moving west from Harrisburg, Penn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He launched G.T. Brown & Co. just as the Civil War<\/a> was ending \u2014 perhaps a sign of candid optimism \u2014 and the business prospered throughout the Reconstruction era<\/a>. But with patrons such as Benjamin Franklin Washington<\/a>, editor of the then-openly racist San Francisco Examiner<\/em><\/a>, Brown lived with the grinding daily risk of exposure. One cannot help but wonder whether the fitful end of Reconstruction in 1877, with its troubled aftermath for black Americans, might have propelled his decision to head out into the wilderness to paint scenic landscapes…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1879, Grafton Tyler Brown took a giant leap. A successful San Francisco businessman, then 38, he decided to become a Western scene painter. Brown sold his thriving lithography company and headed out to see the sights, brush in hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,1245,8,6462,20],"tags":[455,32295,16524,18902,28609],"class_list":["post-62116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-california","tag-christopher-knight","tag-grafton-tyler-brown","tag-pasadena","tag-pasadena-museum-of-california-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62116"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62118,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62116\/revisions\/62118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}