Published in the Weekly Volcano, June 9, 2016
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| “A Canyon River with Pines and Figures (Yellowstone),” circa 1886. Oil on canvas, Grafton Tyler Brown, courtesy Tacoma Art Museum, museum purchase with funds from the Art Acquisition Fund and the Black Collective. |
As an art critic and lifelong student of art,
I must confess that my education is sorely lacking in certain areas — 19th
and 20th century Western art being a prime example. I don’t mean
Western as opposed to Asian or Egyptian or African; I mean American cowboy art
and grandiose landscapes depicting the majesty of the Western scene. This means
that I don’t know Grafton Tyler Brown from Grandma Moses, but apparently he’s a
big deal among aficionados of Western art, and Tacoma Art Museum has recently purchased a “significant,
rare landscape painting” by Brown. It is a large (five-foot wide) landscape of the
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone titled “A
Canyon River with Pines and Figures (Yellowstone),” painted in 1886
while living in Portland. It is now on display in TAM’s Liliane and Christian
Haub Gallery.
According to TAM, his works are highly sought by museums. They
can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, and Oakland
Museum of California, and Tacoma’s own Washington State
History Museum, which has a Brown
painting of Mt. Tahoma, a.k.a., Rainier. The first retrospective exhibition of
his work, Grafton
Tyler Brown: Visualizing California and the Pacific Northwest, was presented by the California African American Museum, Los Angeles in 2003. It traveled to
Baltimore, San Francisco, and the Washington State History Museum.
Brown was
the first African-American artist to paint landscapes of the Pacific Northwest and California.
The scenes he paints are calm and reverential.
“A Canyon River with
Pines and Figures (Yellowstone),” pictures the Grand Canyon of the
Yellowstone with pine forests in the foreground, rugged sunlit rock walls
leading the eye into the distance, and the Yellowstone River winding through
the canyon.
“We are delighted to acquire Brown’s stunning landscape
painting. This is our first significant purchase to complement the Haub Family
Collection of Western American Art since the opening of the Haub Family
Galleries in November, 2014. We are grateful for the community support that
made it possible to acquire this exceptional museum-quality work,” said TAM
Executive Director Stephanie Stebich. “This painting beautifully links TAM’s
focus on the art of the Northwest with the art of the broader Western region.
It helps us to tell a more complete story of Northwestern art and artists.”
“Grafton Tyler Brown has long been on TAM’s curatorial wish
list, but his works have been rather scarce on the market until recently,” said
Margaret Bullock, curator of collections and special exhibitions. “This is a
lucky confluence of both the chance to acquire an evocative major work by this
artist and having the funds to make it possible.” The Tacoma Pierce County
Black Collective and the museum’s Art Acquisition Fund supported the purchase.
Brown’s painting is not the only new addition to the museum’s
collection. Twenty additional gifts of Northwest art have also been added,
including four mural studies by Kenneth Callahan; a pastel, charcoal and dry
pigment work by Norman Lundin, professor emeritus at University of
Washington; Robert Helm’s 1990 oil on panel “Bone
Yard”; a selection of 13 works on paper including watercolors and
prints by Alexander Phimister Proctor; and William Morris’s 1992 “Lace Urn,”
a blown glass vessel in a metal stand. A selection of these works will be
rotated into the exhibition What’s New at TAM? Recent Gifts to the
Collection and will be on view through September 18.
Tacoma Art Museum, Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., $12-$14, 1701 Pacific Ave. Tacoma, http://www.tacomaartmuseum.org/
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