‘Greatest bird painter of all time’ now nearly forgotten
In his day, Rex Brasher, of Chickadee Valley, just west of Kent, was lauded as the true heir to John James Audubon.
Brasher spent decades traipsing across the North American continent sketching birds. He transformed those sketches into 875 radiant watercolors, then published a gorgeous 12volume set of his paintings, “Birds and Trees of North America,” hand-coloring each print in each of the 100 sets he produced — an astonishing 90,000 prints in total.
The naturalist John Burroughs called Brasher “the greatest bird painter of all time.” In the 1930s, T. Gilbert Pearson, then president of the National Audubon Society, said Brasher’s watercolors were “the most beautiful things I have seen.”
And today — who knows him?
The state of Connecticut owns the paintings, but has nowhere to show them. They’ve been in storage, out of sight, since 1988, at the University of Connecticut Library in Storrs.
Many of the volumes of “Birds and Trees of North America’’ sit in institutional libraries — UConn, Yale University and Trinity College all have sets. But others have been sliced up, their prints sold individually on the market.
And while there’s a Brasher Road in Wassaic, N.Y., three miles west of Kent, it’s unclear if motorists driving by have any idea who lived in the old farmhouse at the dirt road’s end or his heroic work there.
A group of Brasher devotes in Kent and Wassaic hope to restore his place in American art and ornithology. The Rex Brasher Association, formed about a decade ago, has a website Rexbrasher.org.
The association also has digital prints of a few of Brasher’s paintings so that people can get some idea of the glory that exists, hidden.
And it’s now trying to reorganize itself, to better spread the word.
“I think we are set for a major expansion,” said Don Cramer, of Kent, as one of the association’s members.
Rex Brasher — christened Reginald — was born in Brooklyn N.Y. in 1869. His father, Philip Marston Brasher, was a dedicated amateur ornithologist who taught his son to look seriously at birds.
Rex trained as an engraver at Tiffany & Co. but had no formal art instruction. Nevertheless, by 16, he was painting birds, and at age 20 set himself a goal — to paint all the species listed by the American Ornithological Union.
He sailed down the East Coast alone, sketching as he went. He worked odd jobs — carpenter, road hand, bookie’s assistant — as he traveled west to see the birds there.. He hired out on a fishing boat for two years to watch seagoing species off the Atlantic Coast. He became a jack-ofall-trades.
“He could do anything,” said Bob Meade, of Wassaic, a member of the association.
Meade’s grandparents befriended Brasher when he moved to a farmhouse in Wassaic — what he called Chickadee Valley — in 1911. The house had no electricity and Brasher — a lifelong bachelor who split 20 cords of wood a year to heat the place — would walk the three miles to Kent when he needed supplies.
Brasher twice destroyed all his paintings, unhappy with his work. But by 1928, he finished his watercolors to his own satisfaction — 875 paintings, compared to Audubon’s 489.
But he had monumental bad timing. He began selling “Birds and Trees of North America” when the Great Depression hit and many of his subscribers bailed on him.
The state of Connecticut bought his watercolors in 1941 for $72,290 but balked at building a planned museum for them at Kent Fall State Park. When the U.S. entered World War II, people forgot all about the Brasher Museum.
In 1953, the state began exhibiting Brasher’s paintings on a rotating basis at Harkness Memorial State Park’s mansion in Waterford. But direct sunlight and salt air are not good for watercolors and in 1988, the state removed the entire collection for safe keeping to the UConn Library, where it’s been ever since.
“The irony is that he wanted the art to be kept as a collection,’’ said Cynthia Ayers, of Wassaic and a member of the association. “He got his wish.”
Brasher died in 1960 in the Gaylordsville section of New Milford. His fame began to dissipate after his death.
Ayers said that Brasher — who painted birds realistically, in their natural settings — was an artist, but also an environmentalist and conservationist. Even in the 1920s, he could see
species being threatened.
“He was so ahead of his time,” she said.