A Trailblazing African American Artist and Printer

Among the more than 500 American lithographers represented in The Huntington’s collection of commercial prints, posters, and ephemera is Grafton Tyler Brown (1841–1918), one of the few African American artists and printers in the American West during the 19th century.

Brown broke barriers in multiple professions: as an accomplished illustrator and lithographer, a successful business owner, and a gifted landscape painter. His work chronicles visual culture and business history in the United States during the later part of the gold rush era and the decades following the American Civil War, and his lithographic output captured and influenced popular taste in the commercial printing industry.

Artistic Beginnings in California

Brown arrived in California as a teenager in 1858. By 1860, he was honing his artistic skills as an illustrator under the mentorship of Charles Kuchel, a San Francisco printer who introduced him to lithography. Kuchel transformed some of Brown’s early cityscape sketches into large-format lithographs, capturing the urban expansion of the West. These included View of Santa Rosa (ca. 1860), Virginia City, Nevada Territory (1861), and City of Portland, Oregon (ca. 1861).

Brown would later illustrate city views through lithography of his own in the late 1870s. Capitalizing on public curiosity for California’s recent past, he contributed to such historical publications as the Illustrated History of San Mateo County, California (1878). Of the 64 views featured in the book, 41 were drawn and printed by Brown, including Ocean View Looking South from the Residence of S. P. Pharis, Pharis District, San Mateo Co. (above) and Residence of W. H. Lawrence, San Mateo Cal. (below).

Versatile and Innovative Entrepreneurship

In 1865, following Kuchel’s death, Brown assumed ownership of his mentor’s lithographic business. Renamed “Grafton T. Brown & Co.,” his firm operated on a block of Clay Street in San Francisco known to the trade as “Printer’s Row.” The company produced a wide range of commercial materials, including city and railroad bonds, stock certificates, billheads, maps, and show cards. These lines of production showcased the company’s versatility as lithographers, steam press printers, and engravers. Brown’s ability to adapt and innovate kept his presses rolling amid stiff competition from an all-star roster of lithographic rivals that grew rapidly in 1870s San Francisco, including Bancroft & Co., Bosqui Engraving and Printing Co., Britton & Rey, Crocker & Co., and Schmidt Litho. By 1873, Brown joined forces with accountant William T. Galloway to secure the company’s profitability in an increasingly challenging market.

Brown’s mature lithographic designs revealed his keen eye for detail and artistic flair. For instance, his commission scrip—a redeemable advertising coupon for William Wilson’s Oakland clock and watch store—was as intricate as government-issued currency, featuring maritime vignettes that reflected California’s nautical heritage: a sailor with a sextant and a full-rigged clipper ship.

Lithographic Expertise

Brown also excelled in designing billheads, the essential business stationery of the 19th century. His work for Fechheimer, Goodkind & Co., a San Francisco clothing manufacturer and importer, featured fine lettering that mirrored the high quality of the company’s merchandise. It also included a detailed vignette of the company’s towering headquarters, underscoring the grandeur of the enterprise. The billhead had a blank date line so it could be used throughout the decade. In the 1876 billhead below, a salesclerk with a flair for penmanship filled in the date to record an order.

Brown’s lithographic expertise extended to creating visually captivating covers for sheet music, a popular medium of the time. In 1871, he illustrated the cover of “The Days When I Was Young,” a song whose lyrics recall a youth spent in the land “where the cotton grows.” The artwork features a dignified elderly Black man on a path lined with palm trees and prickly pear cacti.

An Influential and Inspirational Career

By 1878, changing tastes in lithographic design and declining demand for traditional commercial printing led Brown to sell his business. He moved to Oregon in the 1880s, where he transitioned to landscape painting, becoming the first professional Black painter in the Pacific Northwest. A rare photograph of Brown, taken in 1883, shows him dressed in a suit and tie, posing confidently as a fine art painter before an easel.

Brown’s professional career follows the trajectory of 19th-century America. As the nation underwent enormous economic development and urban growth, commercial interests fueled the publication of lithographic prints and ephemera, which, in turn, ignited and propelled Brown’s printing career. As towns and cities rapidly developed, an art movement emerged to celebrate nature by capturing a vanishing North American landscape, energizing Brown’s painting career.

From his influential lithographic prints and ephemera that captured the spirit of 19th-century California to his breathtaking landscape paintings of the Pacific Northwest, Brown’s contributions remain an inspiration.

David Mihaly is the Jay T. Last Curator of Graphic Arts and Social History at The Huntington.