Bolton Coit Brown was one of the original founders of the Byrdcliffe Colony in Woodstock, NY, part of what is now referred to as the Woodstock Art Colony. Brown was born and raised in Dresden, in upstate New York. After receiving his Masters in Painting from Syracuse University, he moved to California in 1891 to create the Art Department at Stanford University. Brown headed the department for almost ten years.

Brown’s skills as an artist and outdoorsman brought him to the attention of Ralph Radcliffe Whithead, an aristocratic utopian who developed the concept, and supplied the capital, for the Byrdcliffe Colony. Brown convinced Whitehead that Woodstock, NY in the heart of the Catskill Mountains was where Byrdcliffe should be, although Whitehead had planned on a location further south. Along with fellow artistic spirit Hervey White, also hired by Whitehead, Brown developed and managed the grounds of Byrdcliffe from 1902–1903.

Bolton Brown went on to create experimental landscape paintings, migrating between Woodstock and New York City and working within the style that came to be known as Tonalism. He exhibited one painting at the legendary 1913 Armory Show in New York but, despite skill and dedication, never succeeded as a painter. In 1915, he turned to lithography. Brown earned his greatest fame printing lithographs for well-known Woodstock artist George Bellows, whose premature death in 1925 was both a professional and emotional blow to Brown. Brown also printed for Rockwell Kent, John Sloan, George William Eggers and others, Brown created over 400 lithographs of his own, with a focus on nature and female nudes; lithographs such as Moonlight Bathers (1915), Cloudy Dawn, (1916) and Sifting Shadows (1916) represent Brown's ability to translate Tonalism from painting into a print medium.

Brown died in 1936 in Woodstock, alone and impoverished but by no means unaccomplished. Thinking and working ceaselessly until the end, he left behind an enormous output of lithographs and writings, including books and articles on painting and lithography and 12 volumes of journals documenting his experiments in print-making.