Brown was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and the son of a freedman and abolitionist. He learned the skill of lithography in Philadelphia at age 14. He became the first African American artist to document California and the Pacific Northwest after joining the initial wave of African American migration to the West in 1858. At the age of seventeen, settling first in Sacramento and then in San Francisco, he carved a niche for himself as a topographic artist and lithographer. He worked for the lithography firm, Kuchel & Dressel and later became proprietor of the printing firm G. T. Brown & Company, where he produced illustrated books, maps, and bird’s-eye views that documented the boom towns of the mining country of Nevada Territory and California. The lithographs were often hand-colored and capture the character and terrain of the region. They set the stage for Brown’s work as a landscape painter.
In 1881, Brown sold his business and moved to Victoria, British Columbia where he worked with the Amos Bowman Geological Survey. He worked as a draftsman and documented the Cascade Mountains. Back in the USA, he traveled and painted Mt Rainier, Mt Hood, at Yosemite and Yellowstone National Park. By 1886 Brown settled in Portland and continued to build a career as a fine artist. Like his counterparts in the Hudson River School, he specialized in panoramic landscapes of the American West. (Our thanks to Seattle Art Museum)
