One of the goals of the Rex Brasher Association has always been to learn more about Rex Brasher's remarkable life. Most of the information originally came from his nephew Milton Brasher's biography, Rex Brasher: Painter of Birds, published by Rowman and Littlefield in 1961.
Two of the founding members of the RBA, Melode Brasher and Deborah Brasher, were very generous in sharing memories of their great-uncle. Upon their deaths, many more details of his life became known through Rex's unpublished works such as his autobiography, Phalarope, and Spindrift.
What follows is a timeline of Rex's life based on the information obtained so far. Material will continue to be added and some items will be refined as we learn more from the newspaper articles, letters, and other ephemera in our collection. A picture finally begins to emerge of a singularly focused yet restless man who continued to learn about and study birds for his entire life. If you'd like to volunteer in this effort, please contact us at hello@rexbrasher.org. We would very much welcome your help.
Rex Brasher is born in Brooklyn Heights, New York.
On a bright nebulae in Orion, Vita, the God of Life, reclined indolently, long, long before A. D. 1869 when I arrived on this bit of cosmic dust called Earth. Just looking at the same old chaos of stars and lolling on a vaporous couch for aeons was becoming tiresome. So it happened that they passed in a room on Willow Street, Brooklyn, 1869, noted my arrival out of the darkness and gave me a sheltering wing. There is an invisible twin in this cradle named PURPOSE.
— Rex Brasher
Rex begins work as an apprentice in the copperplate engraving department of Tiffany & Co. One of the last projects Rex would work on at Tiffany was the invitation to attend the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty on October 28, 1886. He would remain in this role until 1887.
Rex begins managing the photoengraving department at the Lakeside Press in Portland, Maine. He would remain in this role until 1894.
Rex begins his journey south on the Phalarope, a sloop he had custom built to his specifications. His friend, Captain Andrew, asked:
How in tunket did you ever get that name?
From little birds about the size of sandpipers but different from all other shore birds.
How?
Because the lady runs the family life. All she does is lay the eggs, then orders the bridegroom to take over, hatch the clutch, and raise the youngsters while she just struts.
After sailing the Phalarope 2,740 miles from Maine to Florida, Rex sells the sloop, packs up his drawings and field notes, and takes the train back to New York.
Rex is at home in Brooklyn, painting and playing the horses with his brother Charles. He wins $10,000 betting on a horse called Knight of the Garter and uses the money to fund his trip to the southeastern United States to observe and sketch birds. His adventures include meeting, at gunpoint, a former Confederate officer who invites him to dinner and shows him where to find the elusive Ivory-Billed Woodpecker.
After losing $5,000 on an ill-advised bet on another horse, Rex signs on to the fishing boat Eva and Annie out of Boston as an opportunity to study ocean birds and earn money for his next trip. It's not clear how long he worked as a fisherman, but the experience figures prominently in his writing.
Using the money earned from fishing, Rex begins a trip to the western and southwestern regions of the United States. He spends about two years studying birds, making sketches and field notes, and sending them back to Brooklyn. When hard-pressed for money, he takes jobs, such as working for a printer in Los Angeles.
Rex returns to Brooklyn via train from Oregon and begins to study the vast collection of bird skins at the Museum of Natural History in New York. While there, he meets Louis Agassiz Fuertes, who shows him a better technique for painting feathers. They become good friends.
Dissatisfied with his own work, Rex burns all 700 of his paintings and starts over, this time determined to paint accurate backgrounds as well as improved images of the birds. This work lasts most of the decade, during which time he is supported emotionally and monetarily by Katherine Marie Louise Brasher (known as Marie), the daughter of his older half-brother Archibald.
About 1906, I worked out a painting technique that relegated 700 pictures to destruction. Found that if all shadows were laid in first, then covered with color, the result was close to perfection. It required resolution to destroy those hundreds of drawings but life had taught me the bitter fact that we are judged far more relentlessly by our inferior creations than praised for good work we do. Into the fire they went.
— Rex Brasher
T. Gilbert Pearson, President of the Audubon Society, offers Rex a $700 commission to illustrate The Birds of North Carolina.
With the $750 in hand, Rex and Marie look for a place out of the city where Rex will be able to paint without distractions. They purchase a primitive farmhouse in Wassaic, New York, just across the state line from the nearest town, Kent, Connecticut. This 116-acre wooded property is where Rex will complete all 874 paintings in his collection, write Secrets of the Friendly Woods, and hand paint 88,200 prints that comprise the one hundred sets of the encyclopedic twelve-volume Birds and Trees of North America.
Rex and Marie move from Brooklyn to their new home in Chickadee Valley.
Remained in the city until April 1913. Song Sparrows were in full melody as Dave Templeton drove me along the narrow road to HOME where I was destined to pass Autumn and Winter of life.
— Rex Brasher
Rex illustrates key portions of Nature Lover's Library, edited by T. Gilbert Pearson and John Burroughs. Although Katherine Marie Brasher was involved in research and writing, she is not credited.
Rex finishes the last watercolor painting. He has completed 874 paintings of 1,200 species of birds, including males, females, and juveniles.
In 1924 the last painting (one of those damned sparrows) was finished! Now I could sit an’ sit, chop a little wood, fool around in the shop and tend garden. Time had ticked off fifty-five years but physically, I was in better condition than the average man at forty.
— Rex Brasher
Rex Brasher publishes Secrets of the Friendly Woods, which brings Rex attention and many visitors.
Rex, Marie, and her brother, Phil Brasher, form Rex Brasher Associates to begin an audacious project to hand-color the 88,200 prints required to publish one hundred sets of books. They send out The Herald to potential patrons and receive enough responses to begin the process. Rex selects the Meriden Gravure Company in Meriden, Connecticut, to create the grayscale prints of the originals. The deal is sealed with a handshake.
In preparation for hand-coloring, binding, and distributing Birds and Trees of North America, Rex has his barn fireproofed and reinforced to carry 25 tons, the estimated weight of the 500,000 key plates and text pages required to produce 1,200 individual volumes (twelve volumes multiplied by one hundred sets).
Rex Brasher, with several assistants, starts hand-coloring Birds and Trees of North America.
Rex starts work on Volume 7 of Birds and Trees of North America.
Rex finishes hand-painting plates for Volume 11 of Birds and Trees of North America.
Rex finishes hand-painting plates for Volume 12 of Birds and Trees of North America.
Rex completes work on Birds and Trees of North America. On the flyleaf, he includes the caption, “Completed with a hymn of Thanksgiving that evolution has produced no more sparrows!”
I left the most difficult volume until the last, and in June, 1932, this was finished—the Finches.
— Rex Brasher
Mrs. Joel E. Spingarn and son Edward David Woodberry Spingarn stop by Chickadee Farm to see Volume 12, the last and final volume of Birds and Trees of North America.
Heralding Rex's completion of Birds and Trees of North America, Time magazine publishes “Painter of Birds.”
Rex’s partner and greatest supporter, Marie, dies.
The Hartford Courant publishes an article about the proposed Brasher Museum that would be constructed near Kent Falls State Park. The paper notes that this location would be especially appropriate because
Mr. Brasher has spent many years sketching and tramping in the Litchfield Hills, and not a few of the plates show the results of this study, although to make the full survey of all the birds of North America with fitting natural backgrounds Mr. Brasher has traveled the length and breadth of the country. None the less, his twenty years in Kent has made them a special contribution of this part of the country to nature study.
If such a museum were opened it would prove a mecca to all students of birds, from the beginner who knows only half a dozen species to authorities who would scrutinize minute details of Mr. Brasher’s work. The plates give delight also to those who care more for trees and flowers than for birds, for these too Mr. Brasher has portrayed with faithfulness and spirit. Indeed his plates are so exquisite, so excellent in composition and in color, so much alive with knowledge and feeling for outdoor life, that many artists, particularly engravers and water colorists, find great pleasure in them without even noting the species of bird pictured.
The proposed museum would be a great text book to the parks, a valuable addition to the recreational facilities of the State in encouraging enjoyment of natural beauty and fostering hobbies of the old and young.
Rex signs a contract with the State of Connecticut. After his entire collection of 874 paintings is moved to the State Capitol, Time magazine publishes “Bird Museum” explaining that the contract requires the state to construct a museum to house the collection within two years. The article describes in detail the three-story round structure that will be built near Kent.
The New Milford Times publishes an article about the progress of the Brasher Museum, which had been discussed for more than a year and “grew out of the desire of Mr. Brasher to have his collection of pictures kept intact and preserved for public inspection.”
M. K. Wisehart publishes “Twentieth Century Audubon” in Reader’s Digest, condensed from an article previously published in the Baltimore Sun.
The New York Herald Tribune publishes “Brasher Takes Back Plates of American Birds,” noting that for almost three years Rex’s collection of paintings had been in the custody of the Connecticut State Park and Forest Commission, which failed to obtain funding from the state legislature.
The Hartford Courant observes that the failure of the State of Connecticut to “make suitable provision” for housing Rex’s collection of bird paintings “is a misfortune that later generations may find hard to understand.”
The entire collection is exhibited at the National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, D.C. Originally planned for one week, the exhibit remains open for another week due to public interest. The Washington Evening Star reports that 7,000 visitors viewed the paintings. A set of Birds and Trees of North America is also displayed, and the value of each set is estimated to be between $4,000 and $10,000.
The Hartford Courant reports that “all the birds of America were shown in the capital this week and bird lovers by the hundreds, from school children to men with double sets of degrees back of their names [sic], hurried to see them.”
It had taken 50 years of work and uncounted hardships to bring them together, to capture the brilliance of plumage and grace of movement and set them down on canvas in accurate detail. That was the job Rex Brasher set for himself at the age of 8. In his sixties now, he rests in his quiet little Chickadee Valley home at Kent, Connecticut, while the product of those years of toil goes out to hunt a home for itself.
For the collection is in just about the same plight as one of the redhead ducks which goes winging across the canvas. No one knows exactly where it will eventually find a place to light. Plenty of agencies would like to have it; but none of them so far have been able to provide a proper home for it.
Nature Magazine publishes Lucy Salamanca’s article about Rex, “‘I’ll paint them—every one.’”
Today, in the same little farmhouse in Connecticut where he completed his paintings, Rex Brasher finds himself somewhat bewildered by all this excitement his birds are creating. When a man labors for half a century, unobserved and unsung, on a labor of love, public acclaim is very apt to confuse or frighten him. So it is with Brasher. He seldom leaves Chickadee Valley for the cities, and when he does, he hurries back to his hills and valleys as eagerly as one of his own chickadees or song sparrows–his favorite birds.
— Lucy Salamanca
The New York Times magazine publishes “A Modern Audubon,” reporting that the governor of Connecticut had recommended the state purchase Rex’s “monumental record of North American bird life.”
The purchase, together with provision of a suitable home for the collection, would bring to a proper close a half century of such work as few naturalist-artists have ever done. Reproductions of the paintings are available in twelve-volume sets which, however, cost $2,500 apiece; Brasher wanted them made available to poor children and earnest teachers and amateur naturalists. The Connecticut purchase would do just that, so he feels that the job he set out to do is nearing the end.
— Governor Robert A. Hurley
In “Brasher's Birds Bought,” Time magazine reports that the State of Connecticut had passed an appropriation of $74,290 to buy Rex's collection of bird portraits. Without a museum to house the paintings and unable “to see its way to building one until the present munitions boom was over,” the state was searching for storage space.
Due to fears of an enemy attack on the East Coast, Connecticut state officials move Rex's paintings, along with Connecticut's most precious documents, including its founding charter and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, to a secret location where they remain for the duration of World War II.
The Connecticut Post publishes an article about the state's search for a permanent site for Rex's collection, which is in the temporary care of the Connecticut State Library. One plan is to locate the museum in Hartford on the theory that more people would visit. Another plan, “the one favored by the artist himself,” is to locate the museum near his home in Chickadee Valley. In an interview with the Post, Rex observed
Above all, I hope to see the museum at least started during my life-time. I’d like to see those 874 children of mine on their way toward having a home of their own. And for my part, I’d rather have the building in the Housatonic Valley country, in a natural, forest setting. It seems suitable and proper, and the children would be at home here.
— Rex Brasher
The Bridgeport Post reports that Rex’s collection — “Connecticut’s most famous ornithological art treasure” — had been placed on display in the mansion at the Harkness Estate, which was bequeathed to the state in 1950.
Rex dies at the age of ninety.
Rex’s entire collection of paintings is moved from the Harkness Museum to the Dodd Center on the campus of the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where it remains in protective storage to this day.
The Rex Brasher Association is registered in the State of Connecticut. Founding members include Rex Brasher's grandnieces, Melode Brasher and Deborah Brasher, and long-time family friends Cynthia Carter Ayres, Janet Reagon, and Robert Meade.
Melode Brasher (1938–2019) dies at the age of 81. She lived in Rex's house until the end.
Deborah Brasher (1936–2021) dies at the age of 84. She lived in Rex's house until the end. Deborah leaves Rex's 116-acre property, home, and art collection to the Rex Brasher Association. Rex's legacy is now in our hands.
Your generous donation will help us build a museum to exhibit Rex’s work, develop educational curriculum, preserve his beloved woodland home, and establish an on-site residency program that will inspire a new generation of artists and naturalists to explore their connections to the natural world and share it with others. It will also help us advocate for the protection of birds and wildlife habitats.