A Life of High Altitudes and Heavy Packs

Belmore Browne lived his life in the thin air of the mountains and the quiet work of the naturalist. Born in Tomkinsville, Staten Island, New York, he moved through the world as a hunter, explorer, and writer. His early years in the field were defined by the weight of his gear and the demands of the terrain. In 1902, he joined the Andrew J. Stone expedition to the Cassiar region of British Columbia, working not just as an artist but as a hunter and specimen preparer. This work for the American Museum of Natural History required him to collect animals and prepare them for study, including bringing a bear cub named Ivan back to the Bronx Zoological Gardens.

The mountains eventually became his primary focus. He was part of the group that achieved the first ascent of Mt. Olympus in Washington State in 1907. His relationship with Mount McKinley was marked by both physical struggle and a sharp eye for truth. During his second expedition to the peak in 1910, he uncovered that Dr. Frederick A. Cook’s previous claim of reaching the summit was untrue, finding evidence that the photograph taken by Cook actually depicted a much lower peak. His final attempt on the mountain in 1912 ended just 125 feet from the summit when a gale of 55 miles per hour and temperatures of –15° forced a retreat.

The Work of a Naturalist

His art was often inseparable from his scientific observations. He did not merely paint landscapes; he recorded the details of the wild with the precision of someone who had lived among it. His oil painting, Mt. McKinley, the South Face (1913), carries the weight of his decade-long focus on that specific peak. This attention to detail extended to his work for museums, where he painted the background scenes for seven wildlife dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He continued this meticulous work on dioramas at Yale’s Peabody Museum until his death in Ross, California.

The subjects of his paintings and sculptures were often the very creatures and landscapes he encountered while exploring. His skill was rooted in the practical knowledge gained from carrying a 17-pound sleeping bag and navigating through heavy snow without modern crampons. Later in life, he settled in Banff, Alberta, where the scenery provided a constant subject for his wildlife and mountain paintings.

Legacy in Collections

The physical traces of his expeditions and his visual records are held in various institutions across North America. His work can be found in several places, including:

• American Museum of Natural History, New York City, NY
• Anchorage Museum at Rasmusson Center, Anchorage, AK
• Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
• Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, MA
• National Museum of American Art-Smithsonian, Washington, DC
• National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson Hole, WY
• Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA
• Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA
• Shelburne Museum, Shellen, VT