By Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918), the first professional African American painter in the Pacific Northwest, “Castle Geyser, Yellowstone,” 1890, oil on canvas, 21.125 x 14.375 inches, The William Sr. and Dorothy Harmsen Collection at the Denver Art Museum. #art #blackart #blackartist #blackartists #BlackHistory #arthistory From the museum: “Like his parents and siblings, Brown was listed as Black in the 1850 and 1860 censuses. His biographer Robert Chandler states that in Sacramento, where Brown landed in 1858, he was also listed as Black. However, after his move to San Francisco in 1861, this racial identifier disappeared. As Caoimhe Morgan-Feir writes for Canadian Art, the fact that his race was not identified in publicity for an exhibition of his landscape paintings in Victoria, BC, probably underscores that he passed there as white. If Brown had been perceived as Black, it would have certainly made the papers. This omission matters, for it helps reveal how Brown negotiated racial prejudice by passing as white within the notoriously exclusionary field of fine art. It also reminds us to pay attention to the omissions in our own historical collections, in which works by Black artists and other artists of color are all too frequently missing. The Civil Rights era of the 1960s inspired a renewed look at the work of Black artists including Grafton Tyler Brown. Since then, scholars, curators, and collectors have worked to ensure that his work and life is included in the larger history of American art.”