Grafton Tyler Brown was the first known African American artist working professionally in California. Trained as a lithographer in his home state of Pennsylvania, Brown moved to northern California in 1860, where he worked for the renowned printmaking studio, Kuchel and Dresel. Brown eventually began his own highly successful lithography company in San Francisco, where he designed and printed commercial advertisements, maps, and city views for local businesses such a Levi Strauss and Ghirardelli Chocolate Company. In 1879, Brown sold the business to concentrate on his passion for exploring and painting the landscapes of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest.
Brown’s View of Mount Rainier comes from this particular time in the artist’s career. Like his French contemporaries, the Impressionists, Brown was fascinated by the effect of light and atmospheric changes on a single, outdoor subject. He repeatedly returned to the same natural settings to capture them at different angles, and in different weather and seasons. LACMA’s painting is one of several documenting the artist’s studies of Washington’s MountTacoma (now Mount Rainier). However, unlike the loose, gestural style of the Impressionists, Brown’s paintings maintain the meticulous realist perspective and line of his lithographs.
