Grafton Tyler Brown

Grafton Tyler Brown was California’s first renowned Black sketch artist, known for his work as an illustrator, landscape painter, and lithographer. He began his career at the Kuchel and Dresel lithography firm, which specialized in views of California’s mining towns. Brown’s family, freed slaves who moved from Maryland in 1837, arrived in San Francisco in the early 1860s.
He traveled widely across California and surrounding states, creating landscape and bird’s-eye town views, including paintings of the Grand Canyon and the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River. In 1861, he joined the Kuchel and Dresel firm, contributing illustrations for The Illustrated History of San Mateo County. In 1879, he left lithography to focus on landscape painting, traveling the Northwest. Brown later worked as a civil engineer for the U.S. Army Corps in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he continued to identify as an artist until his death in 1918. His works are held by the Washington State Historical Society.