cover image Crayonstone: The Life and Work of Bolton Brown with a Catalogue of His Lithographs

Crayonstone: The Life and Work of Bolton Brown with a Catalogue of His Lithographs

Clinton Adams. University of New Mexico Press, $75 (285pp) ISBN 978-0-8263-1388-1

Brown's finest lithographs reveal great subtlety and feeling; their simple directness and poised beauty call to mind Winslow Homer or Whistler. Known primarily as the printer of George Bellows's lithographs, Brown (1864-1936) was also a great printmaker and a fascinating painter in his own right. His oils betray influences ranging from the Impressionists and Fauves to the Hudson River School. In this excellent, sensitive, richly illustrated biography, Adams, former director of the Tamarind Institute, views Brown as an adventurous spirit who founded a utopian art colony in Woodstock, N.Y.; climbed the Sierra Nevada mountains; taught at Stanford University; and exhibited in the New York Armory Show in 1913--but died in poverty and obscurity. Brown's solitary, frustrating life stands in stark contrast to his glorious prints. (June)