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The Unbendable Bolton Brown

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The Unbendable Bolton Brown Fearless and fervid, Stanford’s first art professor left his imprint on California’s peaks and on lithography. For Bolton Brown, as to all supreme workmen, there were no ‘accidents’ in any process except those resulting from error on the part of the practitioner. —JOHN TAYLOR ARMS WHETHER BOLTON BROWN EMERGED FROM THE WOMB a raging antiauthori- tarian or was backed down that path by his minister father, let’s leave to family hairsplitting. One way or the other, when Brown arrived in Palo Alto in the fall of 1891, tasked with creating Stanford’s art department from scratch at the ripe age of 26, he already had a deep loathing for any submission to power and a claustrophobic fear of rules. Before he ac- cepted the position, he wanted to know: Who was this fellow—David Starr Jordan, president of the university—who wanted to hire an artist? Was Jordan a man of taste? Would he answer questions frankly? Did he have art books on his shelves—and had he actually read them? Brown came to Stanford with a not-so- perative to draw, morning, noon and night. secret agenda. He wanted to create a de- He was an earnest fanatic, compelled to set partment that would rival the art schools his students on the right, true path to gen- of Paris. He laid out his plans in a 20,000- uine artistry—a path he would lead them to word manifesto. The course of study he if only he were allowed the necessary cre- proposed would last seven years. He would ative freedom. As with so many fanatics, he transform his students. By the end they found the world to be full of people who would be no mere brush swingers but true thwarted him, which is why this story ends artists, trained eye to brain to fingers. with Brown in a solitary shack in the woods Brown wrote at length on the physical act instead of basking in the gratitude of the of drawing; on the need to develop muscu- disciples he imagined for himself as he pre- lar and mental powers equally; on the im- pared to travel west. BY BOLTON COIT BROWN. COURTESY INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM OF ART, GIFT OF MRS. LUCY FLETCHER BROWN BY DANIEL ARNOLD BIG CEDARS BIG ARCHIVES STANFORD 60 JULY/AUGUST 2016 STANFORD 61 ROWN SPENT his boyhood in rural Bolton and his friends took to the forests, proposed program or Brown himself. New York, roaming the country- creeks and lakes as if called in by the na- Giving up on Cornell, Brown bounced be- side as something of a wild child, free in iads and dryads themselves. Bolton’s fa- tween schools, searching for an institu- mind and body. An early memory of his vorite times were thundering storm days, tion with resources and students and the tells the story of Brown’s lifelong rela- when the wind plowed up waves. Naked, good foresight to put him in charge of tionship to authority figures. When still Bolton would hook his toes into the lake both. And then, in the spring of 1891, he young, Brown awoke to the revelation bottom and let crests 4 feet high wash over received a letter from his sister’s hus- that Satan was an “intellectual conve- him. Standing inside a wave, he’d hold his band, who happened to be secretary to nience” and no more real than Santa breath, open his eyes and watch the silver David Starr Jordan, asking Brown if he Claus or fairies. Filled with the light of sheet at the back end of the wave fall past would like to go west and help birth a new discovery, Bolton eagerly began to ex- his face. Then he’d haul in air and wait for institution on the Pacific Slope. plain the matter to his siblings. In due the next wave, and the next. In New York, Brown had been more course, word of Bolton’s informal reli- Brown entered Syracuse University— at home in wilderness than at home. gious salons reached the elder Brown, one of the few American universities at When he traveled to Europe in the sum- who called Bolton before him, tried and the time to offer art courses—at age 16. mers of 1887 and 1888 to study Turner, convicted him of heresy, and informed He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Veronese and Bouguereau, Brown spent him what he would and would not be- painting and then began teaching free- as much time tramping around the lieve for all time to come. Bolton walked hand drawing to architecture students at Trossachs and Swiss Alps as he did in away from the interview stunned that Cornell, work that he found predictably museums. Arriving in the West, Brown his father (or any man) would tell him unsatisfying. For several years, Brown gravitated just as surely to the Sierra what to think. Of course, it changed petitioned Cornell to initiate a real art Nevada, California’s granite backbone, nothing but his understanding of the curriculum, but without success. Brown the mountains John Muir called the world. “Authority might stop my mouth, wrote insightful, sometimes beautiful Range of Light. Brown began in Yosemite, but not my brains,” Brown recounted in essays and instructional texts about art, found it too touristy, then worked his writings about his childhood. An in- but in his personal communiqués he way up into the wild solitude of the high stance when authority did actually stop turned strident, pompous and hyperre- mountains, where he spent months each Brown’s mouth is not at all easy to find. active to criticism, so it can be difficult to summer climbing and sketching. Another memory, a counterbalance: tell which was being rejected, Brown’s Erase any thoughts you might have of The original Californian climbers were all soloists, trusting Y 1896, Brown was well-established fingers and boots and nothing else. Brown took right to this in California. But his grand vision at Stanford had been put on hold by a committing version of mountain craft. stock market crash and other institu- tional financial difficulties—at least that was the official line. In one letter, Brown tweedy mountain strolling. Rock climb- Maybe he felt compelled to tweak the complained to President Jordan that he ing was already a high art in California in nose of the Victorian prudishness that couldn’t “make bricks without straw.” the 1890s. Moreover, the art was prac- had invaded American high society. Ei- Whether Jordan actually had any desire ticed in a time before the arrival in the Si- ther way, Brown’s nudes became a life- for Brown to construct the intensive erra of climbing hardware or even roped long off-note from a man who, in 1887, program Brown had in mind is another belays. The original Californian climbers rolled his eyes at the Parisian parade of question. Brown had been hired to in- were all soloists, trusting fingers and nude women forced into every pose imag- struct students in painting and drawing, boots and nothing else. As one who lived inable on canvas after canvas. not to create a whole separate college the imperative of training mind and fin- The far better half of Brown’s work is within the university. Nevertheless, gers equally, Brown took right to this a variety of hypnotic skyscapes, some in Brown was recognized as an excellent committing version of mountain craft. ink or pencil, some using oils, above for- teacher and a master of line and form, He was as comfortable holding a wrinkle ests and lone houses. Strange shapes and his future seemed bright. That June of granite as a pencil or brush. and hints of color emerge from clouds he married Lucy Fletcher, a teacher at There are two veins to Brown’s art and rays of light. These images contain the nearby girls’ preparatory school, during the first half of his career. He the storms and waves of his youth and Castilleja Hall. Brown’s sister wrote inked an inordinate number of nudes, also the Sierra alpenglow, that morning that “it was inevitable that Bolton BY BOLTON COIT BROWN. COURTESY INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM OF ART, GIFT OF MRS. LUCY FLETCHER BROWN BY BOLTON COIT BROWN. COURTESY IRIS & B. GERALD CANTOR CENTER FOR VISUAL ARTS STANFORD AT UNIVERSITY; mostly generic curvy bodies bathing in and evening light when the rising or set- should fall in love with Lucy Fletcher, woodland creeks. Maybe those images ting sun turns the granite orange, rose she being the most beautiful thing in link back to a certain adolescent fantasy and red, and illuminates whole volumes sight”—high praise for Lucy wrapped SIERRA WOODS SIERRA A SIERRA PEAK COMMITTEE FOR ART ACQUISITIONS FUND he wrote about of a woman in the woods. of sky. around a subtle dig at her brother’s end- 62 JULY/AUGUST 2016 STANFORD 63 less discourse on visual loveliness. The it his mission for the summer to find a That Brown should have provoked newlyweds ran off to honeymoon in the high, wild Sierra mountain to name for Jane Stanford seems almost as inevita- Sierra, roughing it in storms, bathing in Stanford. And Brown was the type to blo- ble, given Brown’s nature, as his falling creeks and climbing mountains, fulfill- viate about his plans (climbers nowadays in love with Lucy. Jane’s husband had ing all Brown’s dreams and more. call this “spewing”—words change, but died in 1893, nine years after her son, One of the first mountains Brown personality types don’t).
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