No family contributed more to the history of Arkansas art than the Brewer clan of Little Rock and elsewhere. That three generations of Brewers could make their livings as artists in the state speaks well for the arts in a relatively small Southern capital city.
The earliest of the artists was Nicholas R. Brewer, born in 1857. He became a well-established painter of portraits and landscapes and began exhibiting at the National Academy of Design in New York in 1885. A resident of St. Paul, Minn., he traveled widely, exposing his son Adrian to art and artists from around the world.
Adrian developed an interest in art early. By age 12 he had his own "artistic little studio," with a desk, library and drawing supplies. He was particularly fond of drawing horses and kept a diary of his daily visits to a local blacksmith shop.
His father treated Adrian as a serious student and admonished his son, "when you can draw the human figure as faithfully as you can draw a horse, you'll be all right."
In 1911, Adrian entered the University of Minnesota, where he studied art. At the same time, he began studies at the Art Institute of St. Paul and later studied for a short time at the Art Students League in New York.
Jolynda Hammock Halinski, author of the entry on Adrian Brewer in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, wrote that "he learned more about art from some of his father's associates than from his classes."
After graduation, Adrian returned to St. Paul, where he taught at art institutes before opening a commercial art studio in Minneapolis. He developed major clients, including Pillsbury. His work in commercial art is believed to have had a substantial impact on his later work as a painter.
During World War I, Adrian enlisted in the Army, where he was soon painting patriotic posters, cartoons and other works. After his military service, he joined his father as business manager and assistant, a role he played on and off for years. He also continued painting and won many awards in St. Paul competitions.
Adrian and his father came to Arkansas in 1919, when the Art Association of Little Rock sponsored an exhibit of Nicholas' work. While in Little Rock, Nicholas received several commissions, and he took his son with him to Hot Springs, where they set up a studio in the Eastman Hotel.
While in Hot Springs, Adrian met Edwina Cook, whom he married in 1921. Their son, Edwin, would go on to become a well-regarded artist, as would Edwin's daughter, Audrey Brewer Wood.
After his marriage, Adrian made another foray into the commercial art business before tiring of it and resolving to be a professional artist. Again he worked for his father, using the time to hone his skills at landscape painting.
In 1928 Adrian made a splash in the art world by winning the huge $2,500 Edgar B. Davis Prize for his painting of Texas bluebonnet landscapes. The painting is in the holdings of the Witte Museum in San Antonio.
Another example of this "bluebonnet period" is a large painting donated by the late Fred Darragh to the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the Central Arkansas Library System in downtown Little Rock.
The Davis Prize resulted in numerous commissions and financial gain, but Adrian was fearful of becoming known as a "flower painter," so he traveled to New Mexico, where he produced 126 landscape paintings.
Fortunately, Adrian Brewer spent a great deal of time painting Arkansas scenes. He often painted from mountaintops such as Petit Jean. He also found a steady stream of clients wanting portraits -- more than 300, including U.S. Sen. Joseph T. Robinson. That portrait was later hung in the state Capitol.
Commissions in Washington, D.C., and New York helped the Brewer family survive the Great Depression. By 1939, Brewer was closely identified with Arkansas, and in that year he was selected to paint "a gallery of original oil paintings of Arkansas scenes" for the New York World's Fair.
It was a painting of the U.S. flag just before the outbreak of World War II that became Adrian's most famous work. Depicting the flag hanging loosely from a pole, it's a majestic and inspiring interpretation that caught on immediately.
Reproductions of this painting hung in countless classrooms and movie theaters during the war. It can still be found in antique stores and online auctions. The original became the property of the U.S. Naval Academy.
Like his father before him, Adrian Brewer passed on his artistic abilities to his son Edwin, who was a painter of note in Arkansas and later in California. Several of Edwin's works are in the collections of the Butler Center in Little Rock, especially noteworthy being a series of large watercolors depicting historic sites in Arkansas.
Edwin also worked at the Arkansas Arts Center, launching an artmobile which took art to the most remote counties.
While Adrian was primarily known as an artist, some in Little Rock later recalled him as an educator and patron of other artists. With the help of another gifted artist, Powell Scott, he opened the Adrian Brewer School of Art in downtown Little Rock.
Students were treated to lessons in painting as poet John Gould Fletcher would read poems, architect Max Mayer might lecture on great buildings, and beloved local musician Josef Rosenberg often played the piano.
While the first school failed due to the Depression, Adrian and his sons started the Cedar Street Studio after World War II. For years this studio was a haven for Arkansans who craved an artistic presence in their lives.
The late University of Arkansas art professor David Durst perhaps summed up Brewer's major contribution best when he wrote of Brewer keeping "the spark of aesthetic sensibility alive during the difficult years of cultural neglect."
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in Hot Spring County. Email him at [email protected]. A version of this column was published March 11, 2007.