Few people are born black and die white, but that was just one of the amazing reincarnations of Grafton Tyler Brown, the first professional artist to have an exhibition of his paintings in British Columbia.
Now, 134 years later, Brown is having his second show in British Columbia, only a half block from the location of the first.
Brown, who is now known in the United States as one of the first and best African American artists of the American West, started his British Columbia artistic career in Victoria in 1882, faithfully capturing what for us is a long-lost world in his oils on canvas. But in Victoria, Brown was white and his story opens a door to the history of racism in the Pacific Northwest.
Brown’s parents, Thomas and Wilhelmina Brown, were two free blacks who had left the slave state of Maryland for Pennsylvania, where slavery was prohibited, in 1837. Grafton was born in 1841, the first of four children. In the censuses of the period, Grafton and his whole family were listed as “colored.”
At 17 he “reinvented” himself for the first time, making his way west along the Oregon Trail to Sacramento, California, where he took one of the few jobs open to blacks — a hotel porter. There the local census and directory makers also described him as “black” and “colored.”
In 1859, his artistic skills were noticed by the Sacramento Union newspaper, which wrote: “We noticed last evening some very excellent painting done by Grafton T. Brown, a servant boy in the St. George Hotel …. The lad has never taken lessons but his execution will compare favorably with that of acknowledged artists.” Maybe the newspaper mention was what tipped off Charles Conrad Kuchel.
Kuchel hired Brown in 1859 to draw panoramic and “bird’s eye views” of the boomtowns of California, Nevada and the Pacific Northwest, which Kuchel then printed and sold to the residents of the towns.
One example was noted in February 1863 by the California Alta newspaper, which thanked “Grafton Tyler Brown for a correct and beautiful lithographic view of Portland, Oregon, drawn by himself and lithographed by C.C. Kuchel.”
But soon thereafter, Kuchel died in debt, and his widow turned over the stock, tools and debts to Brown and another printer, Edward Harnett. At age 24, the black former servant co-owned an established print shop in San Francisco, one of only 55 lithographers in the entire United States. But he was no longer entirely black.
The United States was in the midst of a civil war when Brown moved to San Francisco — the country grievously split over the question of slavery. California was a “free state,” meaning slavery was not legal, but it was also a racist state. African-Americans were not allowed the vote, not allowed to testify against whites, not allowed on the streetcars, and segregated in schools and public facilities. To be black was to be consigned to menial and lower-paid jobs and to be continually discriminated against.
Whether by chance, but more likely by craft, when Brown, who had inherited his father’s lighter colouring, was enumerated by the San Francisco directory makers in 1861 they did not add the usual designation “colored” and he began a passage into the social and economic world of white San Francisco.
It was not that he was entirely white either; one of his employees in 1872 later recalled that he worked for the “colored man,” but in the get-ahead world of California where many people adapted new identities, there was enough flexibility that Brown’s artistic talent, mannerism, business acumen and social skills allowed him to cross the colour barrier. The 1870 census taker called him a “mulatto,” suggesting he had one African-American parent, while that same year the Dun and Bradstreet credit agency called him a “quadroon,” meaning that he had a single African-American grandparent.
Thereafter, in the U.S. censuses from 1880 to his death, Grafton would appear as white, and the birthplace of his parents was listed as Pennsylvania instead of their real birthplace, Maryland.
The work of passing as white never stops, so Brown took many risks. In 1867, he registered to vote when it was illegal for blacks to vote, and in a decision that was as shrewd a business move as it was a risky social one, he joined the governing Democrats. The Democrats, who had opposed Lincoln during the Civil War, opposed the abolition of slavery and opposed any measures that would lead to equality with whites, gave Brown government and party printing work.
In 1882, he reinvented himself yet again, this time as a painter and, as with his previous transformations, he chose a new city, Victoria. He sold his San Francisco printing business and investments and joined a geological survey of southern British Columbia as a draftsman, for the opportunity to travel and sketch the scenic grandeur of this “almost unknown territory,” as the Daily British Colonist newspaper described it.
By November, he had settled in Victoria and established himself in a studio in the Occidental Hotel at the corner of Store and Johnson streets. The Colonist directed clients to him, describing him as “an artist of more than local celebrity in California and elsewhere.”
The paper told Victorians that Brown was “purposing to do those pictures in water colors and will furnish any of them to order that visitors may take a fancy to, as he will stay in this city during the winter.” By June 1883, he opened his first art show and British Columbia’s first exhibit by a professional painter at the Daily British Colonist’s new building on Government Street, where the Bedford Regency Hotel is today. The paper reported:
“Viewed in the light of artistic productions they were excellent, but when inspected by those with whom the scenes represented were familiar, their fidelity elicited an extra meed of praise, proving that the artist has taken great pains to make them correct portraits as well as good paintings.”
The Colonist was glowing about the exhibit: “If I had the ability of describing landscape painting, any one of these pictures would not be without a purchaser.”
We know nothing of the rest of his time in B.C., but by August 1884, he had shifted across the straits, making Tacoma his base and painting mountains his specialty. The next year, he moved to Portland, where he assisted in the formation of the Portland Art Club and in 1889 he moved again to Helena, Montana, the gateway to Yellowstone, where he stayed two years, selling his paintings and periodically renting the Opera House to show illustrated expositions with the “latest improved dissolving stereopticon,” an early slide projector.
Brown still had one more reinvention left. In 1892, he gave up painting and moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he likely used his Democratic connections to obtain a job at $120 a year as a draftsman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. At age 55, in 1896, he married Albertine, age 36, a French-born artist.
When the Republicans took the White House in 1898, Brown lost his army job and worked for the city of St Paul, but in the meantime, he had started doing some commercial photography. Brown retired in 1916 at the age of 75 and when he died March 2, 1918, his death certificate listed him as white.
From his Victoria exhibit catalogue and newspaper accounts we know that he created more than 40 images of B.C. — most have not been located. Because we have no other images of much of what he captured in B.C. in 1882-83, these windows into a lost world are important pieces of art and history.
But Brown is also important to us today for what he can teach us about the history of racism and the arbitrariness of societal views about race.
The second Victoria exhibition of Grafton Tyler Brown’s paintings is on at the Legacy Gallery, 630 Yates St., until April 1. Grafton’s biographer, Robert Chandler, and UVic history professor John Lutz will speak about Brown’s life and legacy from 3-4:30 p.m., Feb. 4, and local artists Charles Campbell, Kemi Craig and Ann-Bernice Thomas will give performances inspired by Brown at 7 p.m., March 10, at the Legacy Gallery.
More information on the missing British Columbia paintings of Grafton Tyler Brown can be found at graftontbrown.ca.
John Lutz is a professor and chairs the history department at the University of Victoria.
