Edith Branson: Modern Woman, Modernist Artist
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Transcript of Edith Branson: Modern Woman, Modernist Artist
EDITH BRANSON:MODERN WOMAN,
MODERNIST ARTISTby Patricia T. Thompson
© Patricia T. Thompson, 2010
2
Part I: “Finding Her Own Path”
In 1957, the influential advocate of modernism Walter
Pach used the term “Submerged Artists” as the title for an
article in The Atlantic, one of his many articles for the
popular press.1 There are artists, he wrote, who “even if
they cause a stir in that time, the full significance of their
work will not be evident till long afterward, and they may be
forgotten, submerged under the mass of the world’s
interests, for a very considerable while.” Although he did
not mention her in the article, Pach’s friend Edith Branson
(Edith Lanier Branson Smith, 1891-1976) is one of a legion of
“submerged” Modernist women artists, some now rising to
the surface but many still virtually unknown.2 (Fig. 1)1 For “Finding her own path” see Note 73. See Pach, “Submerged Artists,” The Atlantic 199: 2 (February 1957): 68-72. In his essay, Pach cites major European and American artists, including A.S. Baylinson, one of Branson’s teachers. Pach inscribed numerous books to Edith Branson, three of which have been donated to the Sloane Art Library by Mrs. Jacqueline Branson Smith, including Masters of Modern Art (New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1924); Queer Thing, Painting (New York and London: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1938); and Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890 (New York: Artbook Museum, 1936). A portrait of the young Pach (1905) by William Merritt Chase is in the North Carolina Museum of Art, reproduced in Exhibition of the Art of Walter and Magda Pach (Saint Paul, MN: Minnesota Museum of Art, 7th July-10 September, 1989), [3.]2 I owe a great debt to the late Mrs. Jacqueline Branson Smith, (hereafter referred to as JBS), Branson’s daughter-in-law and widow of Charles Branson Smith, Edith Branson and Young B. Smith’s son, for introducing me to Branson, supplying me with essential information, and unpacking Branson’s oeuvre after contacting me upon locating Branson in the Sloane Art Library’s North Carolina Women Artists Archive. The small Archive was established by the North Carolina State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in 1988 and deposited with the Sloane Art Library in 1990. Mrs. Smith, an indefatigable researcher, spent years in an effort to bring Branson’s work the recognition it deserves, and to find a venue for her work. Branson’s niece, the late Barnett Branson Wood, a great admirer of her aunt’s work, assisted the Smiths in their early efforts to make Edith Branson’s work known. Although recent
3
Fig. 1. Portrait of Edith Branson as a Young Woman, n.d., Photograph. North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill. Gift of Jacqueline C. Branson Smith.
exhibitions such as Marian Wardle, ed. American Women Modernists: the Legacy of Robert Henri, 1910-1945 (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Museum of Art; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005) are helping to redress the lack of attention to women modernists, there is much more work to be done. A helpful recent overview is Laura R. Prieto, “Making the Modern Woman Artist,” in At Home in the Studio: the Professionalization of Women Artists in America (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.)
4
The modernist era (the period of Cubist and Abstract art
that Alfred Barr characterized as “classic modernism”) was,
perhaps, like no other in the opportunities newly gained by
women artists, with burgeoning associations, supportive
political movements, access to expert training in a range of
traditional and new genres, and--foremost among them-- the
chance to exhibit their work. Yet even a cursory glance at
exhibition records reveals how comparatively few women
artists exhibited, and how few, despite their talent, are
remembered today. Edith Branson is one of many deserving
new attention and recognition.
Born in Georgia, the daughter of an aristocratic
Georgian, Lottie Lanier (of the same family as the poet
Sydney Lanier) and the distinguished North Carolina
educator Eugene Cunningham Branson, Branson had three
siblings, including a younger sister, Elizabeth.3 Although in
5
early years they lived in a small farmhouse without
electricity and water, their parents were educated, well-
traveled in Europe, and of a strong liberal bent which Edith
Branson absorbed. Eugene Branson believed women should
be admitted to the university and not segregated in women’s
colleges, “enjoying the right of full freedom to enter the
University if they choose.”4 In 1914, he left his position as
president of the Georgia State Normal School for a
professorship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. His daughter Edith, already engaged, lived in Chapel
Hill briefly, marrying fellow Georgian, Young Berryman Smith
(1889-1960) in 1914. After living in Atlanta for several
years, where Smith practiced law, they arrived in New York
in 1918, when he joined the faculty of Columbia University
as assistant professor. He served as Dean of the Law School
from 1928 to 1952.5 Paradoxically Edith Branson, daughter
and wife of eminent academics, attended neither college nor
a formal art academy, which in later life she regretted,
possibly believing that a degree would have given her work
more credibility.6 Even so, well trained and devoted to art,
6
she pursued painting in the avant-garde circles of New York
over the course of more than two decades. And yet she has
remained invisible, submerged, like a host of other
modernist women artists who are now slowly, sporadically,
but deservedly being reintroduced.7
“Those were exciting days,” she recalled in1961 in one
of only a few newspaper interviews she gave. “We were all
outcasts, more or less, (as she ticked off such names as John
Sloan, Walter Pach, Abram Baylinson, Morris Kantor, Yasuo
Kuniyoshi, Georgia O’Keeffe and others then known as
‘established progressives’)…. “Alfred Stieglitz, owner of
Gallery 291 and just returned from Europe, was the only
person interested in showing our work. He became Georgia
O’Keeffe’s husband, you know…”8 Stieglitz’s was just one of
the modernist circles which surrounded the new arrival
Branson, who disingenuously ascribes more importance to
O’Keeffe than to him.”9 If she was not precisely a member of
the circle, she was exposed to it and to the other modernist
artists’ groups bracketing World War I: the Cubists, Cubist
Realists, Colorists, Synchromists, Orphists, the Seven, and
7
others who, like Arthur Dove, did not “lean on other things
for meanings.”10
Regrettably, Branson left no papers or correspondence,
and only a few interviews; her work, her associations, the
books she owned, and the recollections of her daughter-in-
law must speak for her. Despite her regrets that she lacked
formal academic training, Branson studied with some of the
most important artists of the time, including Charles J.
Martin, A. S. Baylinson, and one of the most influential
teachers of the modernist period, Kenneth Hayes Miller.
Martin, who may have been Branson’s most inspiring
teacher, was born in 1886.11 Only a few years older than
she, he had been one of Clarence White’s students at
Columbia University and taught at White’s photography
school after its first instructor, Max Weber, left in 1918.12
He taught painting, design, art appreciation and art
education in the Fine and Industrial Arts Department at
Teachers College between 1910 and 1951.13 Teachers
College’s illustrious art program, with a Fine Arts
Department established in 1897, included such luminaries as
8
Arthur Wesley Dow who, though not a modernist, taught and
published widely on art education and expanded the
curriculum, initiating a course in modernist painting in
1915.14 After Dow’s death, Martin served as department
head. 15
The young Martin taught a number of other women
artists, including those whose names have been mostly
forgotten but also the notable, chief among them Georgia
O’Keeffe, who was in his painting class at the Art Students’
League in 1914, and at Teacher’s College in 1914 and 1915,
only a few years before Branson joined his classes.16 Trained
as an etcher, Martin worked in other media as well, teaching
perspective at the Art Students League and color and
composition for the Textile Guild of the Keramic Society of
Greater New York.17 He also took students on field courses
to Mexico.18 Branson and her husband had a dual passport
and traveled in Europe in 1926 but it is also possible she
traveled alone with Martin’s group.19 Branson would have
received excellent conventional training from Martin. The
Teachers College program, one of the best in the country at
9
that time, was highly attractive to and supportive of women,
and --conveniently for her-- part of the Columbia milieu.20
The curriculum included drawing, painting, industrial design,
house design, costume design, and art education, with
courses in art history and appreciation, and field trips to the
Metropolitan.21 Since Branson never formally attended
college, as a faculty spouse she may have been a special
student of Martin’s. And since both Dow and Martin were
members of the Independents, exhibiting in its 1917
inaugural, from virtually the moment she arrived in New York
City Branson would have had entrée to the Society’s
activities.22
Another of Branson’s teachers and friends was A.S.
(Abraham Solomon) Baylinson (1882-1950) who in 1931, the
same year of the disastrous Lincoln Arcade fire, inscribed a
photograph of himself to her “a fellow artist.”23 Like
Branson, he had a studio at the Lincoln Arcade, and suffered
the loss of virtually his life work in the fire; she did not suffer
any losses.24 Pach, in “Submerged Artists,” included
Baylinson who, he said, “quickly saw the validity of the
10
Cubists’ investigation of form,” although his approach was
essentially naturalistic.25
Baylinson, a student of Robert Henri, who Pach calls his
“chief influence,” taught at the Art Students League, was a
member and officer of the Independents, and exhibited in
major venues like the Whitney Biennial, the Carnegie
International and the Art Institute of Chicago.26 A realist with
Cubist tendencies, he supported the work of modernists and
was a courageous and driving force for the Independents,
even convicted on a decency charge in 1923 while Secretary
for exhibiting another artists’ controversial work.27 “Baylie,”
John Sloan’s nickname for him, was also active in the WPA.
Although scarcely mentioned in art literature after the 50s,
he was an important figure and not only his commitment but
also his brilliant palette and Cubist realism must have had
some influence on Branson, the abstract colorist.28 More
than any other work, her red and black chalk nudes hearken
to his in medium and subject of choice.29 “Let me see an
artist’s drawing or painting of the nude figure,” he said, “and
I will tell you quicker than from any other test what he is
11
worth.”30 Branson, whose work is dominated by nudes, took
him at his word.
Kenneth Hayes Miller (1876-1952,) another artist with
whom we know Branson trained, studied with Kenyon Cox, H.
Siddons Mowbray and abroad, visiting museums and
galleries as his “academy.” From 1900-1911 he was both
student and instructor at William Merritt Chase’s school of
art. But his major role as a teacher was at the Art Students
League from 1911 to 1951, with a short hiatus in the late
‘30s and early ‘40s. In Miller’s obituary, the director of the
Art Students League called him “a foundation from which
thousands of informed and talented young artists came to
learn their profession.”31 His students included a pantheon
of artists of the Modernist era: Isabel Bishop, Peggy Bacon,
Paul Cadmus, Edward Hopper, Reginald Marsh, Rockwell
Kent, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and scores of others.32 Branson’s
work echoes his principles of color, rhythm, forms and
deconstruction.33 She may have heard, and adopted, Miller’s
comment that “modern art is a dissection of the great
tradition, resulting, in the best examples, in recovery of the
12
picture plane. To build anew on that foundation is the next
problem.”34 Miller exhibited in the Armory Show, but not in
the Society of Independent Artists exhibitions, although he
exhibited widely, including the Corcoran and Whitney
Biennials. His reputation—or at least renown-- as an artist
has fared better than Baylinson and Martin’s.35
In addition to Branson’s training with these eminent
artist-teachers, she recalled that (perhaps inspired by Miller)
she really learned to paint by spending time at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, “studying, copying, and
painting on my own.”36 Charcoal studies in Branson’s
portfolios and pencil drawings in her small sketchpads reveal
a mastery of stylized abstraction from the classical, Indian
and Chinese sculpture she saw there, with studies of
drapery, torsos, limbs, hands, and gestures.37 She also
made meticulous copies, including one of an ink and
watercolor Rajput cartoon for a mural, Head of Krishna.38(Fig.
2)
13
Fig. 2. Edith Branson, Head of Krishna, after Rajput cartoon in Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d., ink and watercolor, 18 x 24 inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
14
In spite of her tendencies to abstraction and color, she
was an accomplished draftsman and wanted to demonstrate
it.39 The cartoon was accessioned in 1918, so may have
been featured as a new acquisition and thus Branson’s
attention drawn to it. The Metropolitan’s rich collections
were, in effect, her “academy.” Miller, too, may have
encouraged her to study Eastern art for its rich and
sometimes unorthodox (to the Western eye) combinations of
color.40 Branson was also an avid reader, and owned
numerous art books, including books on color theory and
works on Bashkirtseff, Delacroix, Doré, Gauguin, Goya, and
Van Gogh, and the artists of the Renaissance. Some of them
were gifts by and from Pach.41 Her library also included
books on ethnological art and work by contemporary critics
and theorists like Roger Fry and Faber Birren.42 But Branson
did not only read to learn about artists or color theory: in a
moment of whimsy or irony, she used the frontispiece of one
of these books, a French portfolio of illustrations by Angelica
Kauffmann, to paint a pink nude—upside down.43 Was
Kauffmann one of her woman artist heroines? Or was she
15
happily making a statement about women artists’ ability to
portray the nude, an opportunity that was usually limited to
male artist until the late 19th century?44 Or was she
commenting on the clash over nudes at the Independents’
1922 exhibition?45 In any case, nudes—nudes that are
female but not feminine- figure prominently in her portfolios
and paintings. (Fig. 3)
16
Fig. 3. Edith Branson, [Nude on Angelika Kauffmann Title Page], n.d., tempera on paper, 12 1/2 x 20. Inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
17
Although Branson destroyed much of her work, culling
it once every five years or so, she left portfolios labeled “Do
Not Destroy,” work she evidently prized. She framed
anything she considered worthy of exhibition or retention.
Sometimes she painted the frames to extend the work,
blurring the line between work and the space it occupied.
Numerous large figural studies in her portfolios (one dated
1919) suggest she took life-drawing classes in this year.
(Fig. 4)
18
Fig. 4. Edith Branson, [Female Nude], ca. 1920, drawing, charcoal or graphite on paper, 18 x 22 inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
19
The forms have been abstracted into solid masses, but
small and sometimes odd (an electrical outlet) details of the
studio remain in many of them. Branson’s nude studies from
the late ‘teens may have been produced at the Art Students
League, where Miller taught life classes. It is not certain
when Branson studied at the League, but the dates would
coincide with Miller’s (1911-28; 1933-36; 1944-51) and
Baylinson’s (1931-33; 1937-39) activity there.46 The League
probably suited Branson as a place where, as John Sloan
claimed, the instruction ranged from “the conservative to
the ultra-modern,” and where “a student can choose his
studies much as he can choose his food at an Automat.”47
And even if she did not study with them, she would have
been surrounded by the classes of artists like Robert Henri,
George Bellows, George Luks, and Max Weber.
A journeyman artist, Branson worked every day in her
studio at the Lincoln Arcade where, she once self-
deprecatingly noted, she was tolerated because she helped
pay the rent. She did not sell her work nor (with a few
46 Landgren, “Instructors,” in Years of Art, 112-11647 Ibid. 90-91.
20
exceptions) did she make any effort to do so. Married to a
successful, well-off academic, she “could not bring herself to
compete commercially with her friends who were forever
scratching for the next meal.”48 Her husband supported and
endorsed her pursuit of painting, and even after their son
Charles Branson Smith was born in 1919 Edith went to work
every day in her studio. The Smiths had a nanny from North
Carolina and live-in male students who helped with meals
and housekeeping; in return their tuition was paid and a
number of them completed law school. “I have put three or
four students through law school at my own purse,” Branson
remarked.49 At home, Edith also taught Charles to draw—in
her own portfolios she saved his tempera painting of a
castle. He loved to draw, eventually became an engineer,
and had great respect for his mother’s work, describing her
as “a colorist.”50 In a charming portrait of her son as a child
Branson repeated the style of the Rajput cartoon. Her self-
portraits as a young woman are equally direct, whimsical,
and accomplished, revealing a woman with strawberry
blonde hair and intelligent gaze. (Fig. 5)
21
Fig. 5. Edith Branson, [Self-portrait], ca. 1933-4, pastel, 18 x 24 inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
22
During the ‘20s, Branson visited family in Morehead
City, North Carolina, the coastal birthplace of her father. In
neighboring Beaufort, now gentrified but then still an
important fishing town, she painted abstracted seascapes of
the docks, watercolors which must have pleased her since
she signed and dated them, 1928. These vivid watercolors
invite a comparison with John Marin’s. (Fig. 6)
23
Fig. 6. Edith Branson, The C. P. Dey [Beaufort], 1928, watercolor, 20 x 15 inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
24
Earlier in the Twenties a columnist wrote: “Art
Independents Hang Cubists High.”51 In that year, 1921, only
a few years after the 1917 inaugural of what is often called
the “Second Armory Show,” Branson began exhibiting and
also serving as a board member and director with the
Society of Independent Artists, in which she was involved
almost continuously through 1941.52 Charles J. Martin had
exhibited in the first Independents exhibition, and board
members during her activity included Pach and Baylinson, as
well as John Taylor Arms, Jose de Creeft, George Bellows,
Maurice Prendergast, and John Sloan. The exhibitors included
many other significant artists as well as the unknown and
untrained and, as Pach admitted, sometimes the “grotesque
riff-raff.”53 “Modernists and classicists are mingled in Salon,”
commented a reviewer in 1924.54 Though occasionally
castigated by reviewers like Edward Alden Jewell in The New
York Times, many of the Independents eventually achieved
due recognition. Others disappeared into deserved (judging
by some of the catalog illustrations) or, like Branson,
25
undeserved obscurity.55 Until 1925, the exhibitors’ work was
hung democratically, alphabetically by the artist’s last name,
but in that year, by membership vote, works were
categorized as representative, semi-representative, or
abstract, (or, as one reviewer commented, “regular,”
“futurist and cubist and other ists,” and “halfway between
regular and wild.”56 In 1930, Branson exhibited two works; it
was an unusual year, with fewer Cubist works, a section
reserved for works by the late Robert Henri, and a record
number of attendees.57
In 1931, the influence of the Depression had reached
the Independents, with many works reflecting the sobering
theme. Branson exhibited two Compositions. Another record-
setting year, with 12,000 visitors, it was one of the largest
attendances ever for an art exhibition in the United States.
Branson’s work, and that of her fellow Independents, had
exceptional exposure to a broad public.58 In 1932, the
alphabetical order was resumed, and Branson exhibited two
works, including a nude, which Jewell dismissed just as he
did the work of other artists like Alfred Maurer.59 Fewer
26
nudes were shown that year, so it was probably Branson’s
work about which a reviewer commented, “There was one
canvas labeled “Nude” but it was another abstract.”60 It was
also a year when artists could barter their work for the
necessities of life.61 In the 1934 exhibition, Jewell reversed
himself and looked more kindly on Branson’s abstractions,
including her work in a group that could be “segregated from
the rank and file by virtue of definite merit or because, in a
certain freshness of idea and method, they look
promising.”62 From 1934 on Branson--uncharacteristically--
priced the works she exhibited. It is unlikely that she
needed the money but perhaps craved the validation of her
work a price might suggest.
It is difficult to identify many of the works Branson
exhibited with the Independents as she used imprecise titles
like Forms and Composition. Although most of the work in
the Independents exhibitions was for sale, the catalog
entries were illustrated only at the artists’ wishes and
60 “Art Show This Year is ‘Very Abstract’” New York Times 31 March 1932, p. 23.61 “Independents to Barter Art Work at Show; Dentistry or Rent Will Buy a Painting” New York Times 15 March 1932, p. 1.62 Edward Alden Jewell, “Art Independents Open Yearly Show: New York Times 14 April 1934, p. 13.
27
expense. Usually Branson included no illustration for her
entries, but the 1938 catalog illustrated one of her works, a
painting of abstracted torsos with swirling ribbons, Forms,
priced at $500, a substantial amount in those years.63 In
comparison, John Sloan priced his works for that year,
Goldfish Nude and Model Resting, at $500 and $900,
respectively. Perhaps by 1938 Branson felt her work could
command a fair value. If not sold, it was, at least, noticed;
one reviewer commented noncommittally that her work
would fit in at the current American Abstract Artists
exhibition.64(Fig. 7)
28
Fig. 7. Edith Branson, Forms, before 1938, oil on board, 43 ½ x 29½ inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
29
Branson exhibited with the Independents during the
group’s heady years of “no juries, no prizes,” blue law fights,
democratic hats-on policies, controversies over nudes,
exhibition of spirit paintings, satirical portrayals of Christ and
inventive masquerade balls, which in the Depression years
gave way to the less frivolous art for barter.65 Given her
independent spirit, the incongruity of being married to an
eminent dean while associating with radicals did not bother
Branson, the daughter of a liberal.66
Branson was also a founding member and exhibitor at
Contemporary Arts, the non-profit gallery established by
Emily A. Francis in 1929 in order to “bring before the public
the work of the mature artist regardless of his financial,
social, or racial condition.”67 Like the Independents but
unlike Stieglitz, rather than building a gallery around a few
people, Contemporary Arts had a democratic mission. It
65 Unfortunately space prevents citation of the many other reviews in the press of the Independents’ exhibitions but they make fascinating social, not just art, commentary.66 And perhaps the work of modernists, not to mention their friendship and camaraderie, was more interesting to her than, say, the cityscapes of a Caroline Van Hook Bean; Branson may have known Bean (1879-1980), a student of Chase and Sargent, who painted scenes at Columbia around 1918. See New York City in Wartime (1918-1919) (New York: Chapellier Galleries, 1970).
30
proposed alternative ways to own art, such as the “rent-a-
painting” exhibition in 1933 of one Marcus Rothkowitz, which
was Rothko’s first one-man exhibition in New York.68
Christmas Exhibitions marketed works as well; Branson
participated in at least one, in 1933, along with Baylinson,
Milton Avery, Adolph Gottlieb, Louise Nevelson, Mark Tobey,
and scores of other artists who desperately needed to not
just exhibit but to sell their work.69 It was the depths of the
Depression.
Branson was “introduced,” participated in
Contemporary Arts’ group exhibitions, and served as an
officer from its incorporation in 1931.70 She also had a solo
show in 1935.71 The announcement reads “Paintings by
Edith Branson (First One-man Exhibition in New York)
January 28 to February 16, 1935” at their 41 W. 54th St.
Gallery.” The artist was present at the opening, and Walter
Pach was the honored guest at the next Monday evening
reception for members’ and exhibitors’ guests.72 The works
in the exhibition included a synchromist’s array of titles: 1.
Movement; 2. Mechanism; 3. Sea Fantasy; 4. Flowers; 5.
31
Symphony in Grey and Green; 6. Orchestration; 7. Ode to
Music; 8. Conspiracy; 9. Form and Space; 10. Color
Romanticism; 11. Dawn; 12. Color Forms; 13. Unity; 14.
Clarity; and 15. A Lyric. [Figs. 8 and 9]
32
Fig. 8. Edith Branson, Conspiracy, before 1935, oil on board, 29 ½ x 36 inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
33
Fig. 9. Edith Branson, Dawn, oil on canvas, 28 x 22 inches, 1932. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
34
The foreword to the exhibition checklist, which Branson
may have written herself, offers a rare glimpse into her
aesthetic and practice: “Edith Branson has been delving in
color for fifteen years, chiefly studying with Charles Martin of
Columbia, who gave her the courage to work by herself. This
she did for five years, studying Persian and Indian Miniatures
at the Metropolitan. Since then she has found her own path,
working in purely abstract forms in which she feels she can
best convey her joy in color. She believes that all the depth
of emotion that can be experienced thru [sic] sound, can
also be experienced thru color. Miss Branson has made, and
intends to make the study of color her whole life work, -to
express thru painting the experience of living.”73
The New York Times’ lukewarm review by Howard
Devree characterized the works, including Sea Fantasy,
Flowers, and Dawn, as “color experiments in abstract
design…suggestive in some degree but chiefly decoratively.”
74 Yet a month later, Branson’s oil painting from the solo
73Emily Francis Papers, D226 frame 548.
35
exhibition, Dawn, was selected for in the 14th Corcoran
Biennial, where it was exhibited in its Gallery M with the
work of such fellow artists as Edward Hopper and Yasuo
Kuniyoshi.75 Unlike the Independents, the Corcoran was a
juried exhibition. Branson’s abstract work was selected by a
jury chaired by Jonas Lie, a landscape painter, but first and
second prizes went to the more traditional Eugene Speicher
and Frederick Frieseke. Modernist works were, nevertheless,
on the upswing in the Corcoran by the 11th Biennial in
1928.76
In addition to the Corcoran, Branson may have
exhibited with the Guggenheim Museum’s precursor, its
traveling Exhibitions of Non-Objective Paintings (1936-1939,)
which were first shown in Charleston SC, then in
Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York. In 1947, a
Guggenheim exhibition of American “non-objective”
painters, “Gegenstandlose Malerei in Amerika,” traveled to
Zurich and venues in Germany, the first post-war exhibition
of contemporary American artists. During the early years of
the Guggenheim Museum, which opened in 1959, Branson
36
took her daughter-in law Jacqueline there and said she had
exhibited with the Guggenheim traveling exhibitions both in
the U.S. and abroad.77 She owned a copy of the 1938
catalog.
A manifesto by Hilla Rebay, driving force of the Non-
Objective exhibitions, published in the Southern Literary
Messenger, the important southern art and literary review,
would have resonated profoundly with Branson. Non-
objective painting, Rebay wrote, is “simply a beautiful
organization of colors and forms to be enjoyed for beauty’s
sake and arranged in rhythmic order…and has the same law
and counterpoint as has the musical creation…The eye of
the non-objective artist has to become sensitive to the
beauty of the space itself, to be able to invent new
worlds…”78 Branson’s work displays many affinities with the
artists in the Non-Objective exhibitions—the rhythmic works
of Rebay, Rudolf Bauer, Robert Delaunay and Wassily
Kandinsky, in particular. Ribbon-like forms, for example,
which dominate much of Branson’s work, appear in
37
Kandinsky’s work of the mid-‘20s and in Rebay’s work of the
‘40s and ‘50s.
In the ‘30s, Branson exhibited at least once, and
possibly more frequently, with the Municipal Art Galleries,
along with Baylinson, Walter and Magda Pach and other New
York artists.79 She also showed her work in a series of
exhibitions, “Small Paintings for the Home,” sponsored by
Contemporary Arts. The exhibitions, initiated in 1938, aimed
to encourage ownership by showing work “truly worthy of
the attention of the public,” collaborating with museums to
present “paintings suitable for the average home.”80 Of the
44 artists exhibiting with Branson in the series’ second show,
February and March, 1940, only 7 were women, among them
Alice Neel, a fellow Contemporary Arts exhibitor.81 Branson
once again entered Dawn, the work she had exhibited with
Contemporary Arts and the Corcoran Biennial.82
79 “New Municipal Show,” New York Times 17 February 1938, p. 19.80 Small Paintings for the Home by Artists of Today, assembled by Contemporary Arts of New York and the George Walter Vincent Smith Gallery of Springfield Massachusetts and shown at the Gallery October 2nd to October 23rd, 1938.” (Springfield MA: The Gallery, 1938.)81 Small Paintings for the Home…, Feb. 25 -March 24, 1940. (Springfield MA: The Gallery, 1940). Other women artists in the exhibition were: Sarah M. Baker, Bernice Cross, Eleanor de Laittre, Tekla Hoffman, and Martha Simpson.82 Ibid., No. 21 in catalog, 6.
38
The modest 1940 catalog paraphrased from her 1935
solo exhibition that Branson “has made a careful study of
Persian and Indian miniatures at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. Since that period she has chosen her own path, working
3 A pastel portrait of Lottie Lanier (Mrs. Eugene C. Branson) dated 1943, painted by Mary de Berniere Graves (1886-1950,) a noted North Carolina illustrator and portraitist who studied with Chase and Henri, is in the Jacqueline Branson Smith collection; Edith would have known her in Chapel Hill and/or New York. For Eugene C. Branson see Who Was Who in America I (1897-1942) (Chicago: Marquis, 1963): 132 and the Branson Papers in the Southern Historical Collection, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The collection was donated by Mrs. Young B. Smith (Edith Branson) for the Branson family; regrettably, Edith left no correspondence or papers of her own. Eugene Branson, eminent educator, author, and editor, was president of the State Normal School of Georgia, 1900-1912, head of its department of rural economics and sociology, 1912-1914, and founder and head of the rural social economics program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.4 Edith’s older brother Frank Lanier Branson published a book about his father, Eugene Cunningham Branson, Humanitarian (Charlotte: Heritage Printers and the Author, 1967). Linda Nochlin makes an interesting case for the investigation of the “benign if not outright encouraging role of fathers in the formation of women professionals” See Women Art and Power and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1988) 169.5 For Young B. Smith see Who Was Who v. 4 (1961-1968), 881. The Smith’s address is listed as 88 Morningside Dr., New York City. When Dean Smith retired in 1958, notables such as President-Elect Dwight D. Eisenhower, Associate Justice William O. Douglas, and former Governor Thomas E. Dewey were in attendance at his retirement dinner.6 From interview with JBS.7 Branson’s name does appear in Peter Hastings Falk, ed. Who Was Who in American Art 1564-1975 (Madison, CT: Sound View Press, c1999), v. 1, 423; Daniel Trowbridge Mallett’s Index of Artists (New York, R.R. Bowker Co., 1948), 50. The information in Jacobsen’s Biographical Index of American Artists is incorrect. According to JBS, Branson’s earliest signed and dated work is from 1919; the latest, 1941. She was not in the habit of always signing and dating her paintings, however. When she did sign her work she used either E.B. or Edith Branson, not her married name.8 Interview by Ola Maie Foushee, “Art in North Carolina: Painter Recalls ‘Exciting Days’ in the Big City,” Charlotte Observer 23 July 1961, p. 12A. Branson owned a copy of Waldo Frank et al., America and Alfred Stieglitz: A Collective Portrait (Garden City New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1934). A book that provides a near-contemporary view of the milieu, with statements by many artists and writers of the time; it also includes a catalog of the works Branson would have seen, including Stieglitz’s “city” and “hands” photographs, works by Marin, Hartley, Picasso, Dove, O’Keeffe and “Primitive Negro Sculpture.” Exhibition chronologies for 291, the Intimate Gallery and An American Place. One of the contributors to the volume was a Teachers College professor whom Branson may have known: Harold Rugg, who wrote about the forty years of change since the 1890s in “The Artist and the Great Transition,” 179-198.9 Stieglitz’ 291 gallery closed in 1917, the year after Branson arrived in NY; she may not have exhibited there, but surely visited 291 and the other galleries or rooms opened between 1921 and 1950 (the Anderson Galleries, the Intimate Gallery and An American Place. A likely venue for Branson might have been the group show in 1922 at the Anderson Galleries, where more than 177 works by more than 50 artists were exhibited. See “Exhibitions presented by Stieglitz, 1905-1946,” in Sarah Greenough, Modern Art and America” Alfred Stieglitz and his New York Galleries. (Washington DC: National Gallery of Art and Boston: Bulfinch Press, 2000), 543-553. See also New York et l'art moderne: Alfred Stieglitz et son cercle, 1905-1930 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux; Madrid: Museo national centro de arte reina Sofia,
39
in purely abstract forms. It is her belief ‘that all the depth of
emotion that can be experienced through sound, can also be
experienced through color.’ Miss Branson has made, and
intends to make the study of color her whole life work—to
express through painting the experience of living.”83 Dawn
may have been exhibited at least one more time, in a 1937
c2004.) One would like to know if she met Stanton Macdonald-Wright, who exhibited at 291 before he went to California in 1919. Undoubtedly she read his 1924 Treatise on Color. See The Art of Stanton Macdonald-Wright (Washington DC: National Collection of Fine Arts by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1967). Older but still useful surveys of the era of Branson’s art development are Abraham A. Davidson, Early American Modernist Painting 1910-1935 (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), which treats the Stieglitz group, the Colorists and other circles, and William Innes Homer, ed., Avant-Garde Painting in America 1910-1925 (Wilmington DE: Delaware Art Museum, 1975), which includes a checklist of exhibitions in New York during that period. The catalog includes the work of 56 artists, including 8 women and North Carolina native and colorist James Daugherty, a contemporary who Branson may have known. His hard-edged early style of the ‘20s can be compared with her “Stripe” cityscapes.10 Arthur Dove, “A Way to Look at Things,” quoted in Frank, America, 121.11 Falk, Who Was Who, v. 2, 197; Mallett, Index, 27612 Library of Congress Information Bulletin, 60:12 (Dec. 2001) http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0112/white.html.13 Falk, Who Was Who, v. 2, 2197; Mallett, Index, 276. Martin, born in England in 1886, received certificates from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1904 and 1905, a diploma from Teachers College in 1909, and a B.S. from Columbia in 1919. He died in 1955. Jocelyn K. Wilk, Assistant Director of the Columbia University Archives and Columbiana Library kindly provided me with the key dates for Martin’s activity at Columbia.14 For Dow and Teacher’s College, see Chapter VII: “Teacher’s College,” and bibliography in Frederick C. Moffatt, Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922) (Washington: Published for the National Collection of Fine Arts by the Smithsonian Institution Press: for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1977), 104-11; 152-59. For Dow’s appreciation of the connections between music and the visual arts see also Nancy E. Green and Jessie Poesch, Arthur Wesley Dow and American Arts & Crafts (New York: American Federation of Arts in association with H.N. Abrams, 2000), 82.15 Foster Laurance Wygant, “A History of the Department of Fine and Industrial Arts of Teachers College, Columbia University” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1959), 55, 283.16 Other Martin students were Virginia Berresford, Careen Mary Spellman, Anita Pollitzer, Sabina Teichman, and Mary Frances Doyle. See note 12; For the latter two artists see Askart.com. Accessed 1/24/2006. See also Roxana Robinson, Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1989), 10217 See Teachers College Record 22:5 (Nov. 1921): 433. I have yet to locate any examples of Martin’s work. The Smithsonian’s Inventory of American Painting lists one painting, New York Skyline ca. 1900, owned by the Macbeth Gallery, 1981. IAP 63130098.18 John Rothschild, “The Intelligent Traveler,” The Nation 142: 3699 (May 27, 1935): 689 on Teachers College’s field courses.19 JBS-Branson went to Mexico at some point, and her passport photo resembles a woman in a photograph of members of the S.I.A. JBS saw in the John Sloan Archives at the Delaware Museum of Art. The 1926 passport has stamps for Italy, Ireland, Austria, the UK, France, Hungary, Switzerland, etc. In Paris, they stayed at a pension in Rue Washington.
40
exhibition arranged by Emily Francis’ other endeavor,
Collectors of American Art, the non-profit association based
on the model of the American Art Union, for the Centennial
Club, a woman’s club in Nashville, Tennessee.84
20 For a view of women at Teacher’s College in 1912, see Clarence White’s photograph Rest Hour in the virtual exhibition “American Photographs: the First Century” at http://americanart.si.edu/helios/AmericanPhotographs/obwhitc02.html21 Wygant, “A History of the Department”, passim.22 Martin exhibited two works, a still life and landscape. He is listed as an Art Students League associate; address as 562 W. 191St.St.; in Clark S. Marlor, The Society of Independent Artists: the exhibition record 1917-1944 (Park Ridge, N.J.: Noyes Press, c1984), 380.23 Photograph, dated Feb.15/31. Edward Heim Photo-Maker, 67 West 6th St. NY NC. Photographic Archives, gift of Jacqueline Branson Smith. A self-portrait of the photographer, Heim, whose studio was on 67th St., appears in an advertisement in the Society of Independent Artists catalog for 1931.24 JBS says Edith did not lose work in the fire. See “Artist lost life’s work,” New York Times 31 January 1931, 5. For a contemporary synopsis of Baylinson’s work see Helen Appleton Read, “A.S. Baylinson,” Parnassus 5: 1 (Jan. 1933): 5-7; and Pach, Queer Thing, 320-327.25 Pach, “Submerged Artists,” 71.26 See Pach, “The Art of A.S. Baylinson,” American Artist (1952): 24-7, 55-58; John Sharpley, ed. Index of Twentieth Century Artists 3:2, 478-9; Falk, Who Was Who, v. 1, 242.27 Obituary, “Independent’s Baylinson Dies,” Art Digest 24 (May 15, 1950): 10.28 Baylinson’s papers, which I have not yet examined, are in the Archives of American Art. A search of the standard indexes (Art Full Text, Art Index Retrospective and Bibliography of the History of Art yielded nothing after Walter Pach’s 1952 article in American Artist, and yet his work is in the Metropolitan, the MFA Boston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.29 Pach, “The Art of A.S. Baylinson,” passim.30 Ibid., 56.31 Editorial page obituary with testimonials in Art Digest 26 (January 15, 1952): 5.32 Miller’s papers, which JBS has reviewed, are in the Archives of American Art; 23 of his paintings are in the Inventory of American Painting. See also Sharpley, Index of Twentieth Century Artists, 488-490.33 JBS examination of Miller’s lecture notes.34 JBS notes from AAA, Kenneth Hayes Miller, Reels N583 and N583A. Cf. “dissection,” compare with Edward Alden Jewell’s description of Branson’s work as “ornamental disintegration.” New York Times 2 April, 1932, p. 13.35 For major monographs by his contemporaries see Lincoln Rothschild, To Keep Art Alive: the Effort of Kenneth Hayes Miller, American Painter, 1876-1952 (Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1974); Lloyd Goodrich, Kenneth Hayes Miller (New York: The Arts Publishing Company, 1930); and Paul Rosenfeld, Port of New York (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co. 1924); see also Robert G. Pisano, The Art Students League: Selections from the Permanent Collection (Huntington, NY: Heckscher Museum, 1987), 48-9.36 Foushee, “Art in North Carolina,” 12A.37 Catalogues of the Metropolitan’s collections from the period when it was Branson’s "classroom” describe five rooms devoted to Indian sculpture of the classical and medieval periods, including a 12th century relief of Vishnu, Gandharan sculpture, and Mughal and Rajput miniatures. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guide to the Collections (New York: The Museum, 1919, 1922), 71-72 and the then newly accessioned (1926) Buddha Maitreya, a life-size bronze sculpture, the largest extant gilt bronze image from China, which could not but have had an impact on Branson who, perhaps, modeled some of her hand studies and paintings on it. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guide to the Collections, Part I: Ancient and oriental
41
The catalog for the 1944 Small Paintings exhibition,
which included Eilshemius, Evergood, Gropper, Soyer, Stella
and others and only two women, Louise Pershing and Martyl
[Suzanne Schweig,] states that only two paintings from the
1938 show sold, but that seven or eight of those artists, then
relatively unknown, were now included in major shows and
collections.85 Although the catalogs included no prices or
illustrations, they did include valuable biographical
information for the artists.
In addition to her activity with the Independents and
Contemporary Arts, Branson was a member of the “left wing
of the feminine artistic movement,” the New York Society of
Women Artists.86 Membership in the Society, founded in
1925, implied a certain legitimacy as an artist, as opposed to
a Sunday painter or dilettante, yet many of the women, like
Branson, juggled their artistic work with family obligations.87
Branson showed work in the 12th (1937) and 13th (1938)
annual exhibitions, and possibly other years, joining other
Art 2nd ed. (New York: The Museum, 1936), 76. See also the online record for the object, http://www.metmuseum.org/special/China/s2_obj_9.R.asp. Accessed 4/20/2006.38 Head of Krishna, ca. 1800, attributed to Sahib Ram. Cartoon for a mural depicting the dance of Krishna and the gopis. Ink and watercolor on paper; (69.2 x 47 cm.) Rogers Fund 1918 (1918.85.2) www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/icrt/hob_1918.85.2 accessed 3/27/06. The Metropolitan image was also featured on the cover of American Artist (February 1952). Branson’s work is undated.
42
members like her friend Pach’s wife Magda and fellow
Southerner Mary Tannahill. Cubists in the group, who would
have been kindred spirits to Branson, included Blanche
Lazzell, Lucy L’Engle and Agnes Weinrich.88
Jewell characterized the 1937 exhibition of the work of
50 artists as more conservative than its usual modernist
leanings, but still showing evidence of the style in which
Branson worked, “free rhythms, venturesome color schemes,
and abstract designs.” 89 The 1938 exhibition was “one of
the largest and most effective shows” by the Society, with
more than one hundred works exhibited.90 Another reviewer
noted that it was “more frankly modern in sympathies than
the bulk of the examples shown by the National Association
of Women Painters and Sculptors,” the more conservative
organization which had recently held its annual.91 Some
NYSWA members were also members of the Independents,
so Branson would have known them. Many of the NYSWA
artists, like Branson, have been forgotten; in some cases,
their work was mediocre, but others either did not promote
themselves, had no connection with dealers, their work went
43
out of fashion, or they were constrained by their domestic
lives.92
44
Part Two: “Thru Painting the Experience of Living”
Jacqueline Branson Smith characterized Branson’s work
according to several themes, which are helpful keys for
looking at the work, especially given their lack of
distinguishing titles. In addition to the pastels, watercolors
and figure studies, there are at least 80 oil paintings extant,
on canvas or board, in the following categories: Figurative,
including Hands (11); Stripes (9); Geometrical Forms with (8)
and without (9) Ribbons, and Female Figures with (15) and
without (9) Ribbons. Most are framed; many are unsigned
and undated.93
Branson was intrigued by hands, and may have been
inspired by the Asian works she saw in the Metropolitan,
such as the gilt bronze Buddha Maitreya, Buddha of the
Future, whose mudra, or gesture, indicates generosity and
fearlessness.94 Her hands incorporate the recessed nails
typical of Asian art. Stieglitz’s Hands series may also have
been an inspiration. Or she simply might have taken the
45
words of her teacher, Miller, to heart: “Hands are decisive.
When they are hidden in a painting, something incredibly
important is lost. The raising of a finger can enliven the
action of an entire body.”95 Branson’s hands, however, are
often disembodied, fragments as if broken from a sculptural
work, entities unto themselves. (Fig. 10)
46
47
Fig. 10. Edith Branson, [Hands], ca.1940, oil on board, 29 ½ x 23 ½ inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
48
Sculptural influences, including classical but also
African art, can be detected in much of Branson’s work,
particularly the more massive human figures and forms. In
1919, the year after the Smiths moved to New York, the
Mexican artist and Stieglitz circle member Marius de Zayas
(1880-1961) opened a gallery on Fifth Avenue. Its second
exhibition was devoted to African art.96 African art had been
exhibited in New York first at the American Museum of
Natural History in 1910, and at 291 in 1914, in the exhibition
“Statuary in Wood by African Savages. The Root of Modern
Art,” and at the Modern Gallery from 1916 until it closed in
1918.97 An exhibition of African art in January and February
of 1918, the year the Smiths probably moved to New York,
may have taken place before they were settled, so de Zayas’
1919 show may have been Branson’s first exposure to
African art.98 A drawing, possibly a self-portrait in profile,
with columnar neck, stylized “Attic” hair and features,
probably one of Branson’s works from this period, suggests
an African influence. (Fig. 11)
49
Fig. 11. Edith Branson, [Female Head; Self-portrait], n.d., graphite on paper, 18 x 24 inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
50
Branson owned a copy of Henri Clouzot and Andre
Level’s L’Art Nègre et l’Art Océanien.99 She may also have
been familiar with de Zayas’ 1916 work African Negro Art, its
influence on Modern art as well as his 1913
booklet/manifesto A Study of the Modern Evolution of Plastic
Expression, with its illustrations of work by Francois Picabia,
who came to New York in 1915. Some of her work, such as
Forms in Space, which she exhibited in 1940 with the
Independents, exhibits affinities with such Picabia works as
Dances at the Spring (1912.)100 De Zayas’ ideas on what he
called “primitive form” were complex: he exhibited African
art yet at the same time criticized modern artists for
appropriating it.”101 Another de Zayas idea of “primitive” art
that Branson may have pursued in light of her “rhythm”
paintings concerned representation expressed by the
“trajectories of the thing that moves,” an idea explored
earlier, to be sure, by Duchamp.102 (Fig. 12) Her own version
of a nude descending a staircase is a New Woman, big and
bold, emerging from yet dominating the City.
51
Fig. 12. Edith Branson, [City Nude on Stairs], ca. 1935, oil on canvas, 30 x 36 inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
52
Branson’s large nudes are sculptural but like the hands,
often disembodied, as if inspired by torso fragments of the
ancient sculpture she saw in the Metropolitan. A comparison
of her large nude from the late 30s with MacDonald Wright’s
1930 Yin Synchromy suggests that although a colorist, if not
precisely a synchromist, she was more interested in taking
her work to a greater level of abstraction. In these nudes she
is less interested in color than in form and rhythm. One
senses that Branson’s independent spirit freed her from
adhering to any one artistic theory, principle, or ‘ism.” The
large sculptural nudes are essentially Cubist works, with an
emphasis on massed forms. One large nude seems to be
throwing off the swirling ribbons, others are entwined with
red ribbons—swirling bonds, or perhaps only suggestions of
rhythm, and some are simply floating in an ambiguous
space.103 (Figs. 13, 14)
53
Fig. 13. Edith Branson, [Large Nude with Ribbons], n.d. oil on board, 39x34 inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
54
Fig. 14. Edith Branson, [Two Nudes with Black], n.d. oil on board, 35 ½ x 29 ½ inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
55
One of her more figurative works, possibly a self-
portrait, is a large painting of a red-haired woman holding a
bouquet in front of a mirror, reminiscent of a Picasso or
Modigliani. (Fig. 15)
56
Fig. 15. Edith Branson, [Self-Portrait with Mirror], n.d., oil on canvas, 35 x 29 inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
57
Objects like these are rare in her work, which is not
overtly symbolic. A red star on a broken column, however,
recalling Marsden Hartley’s use of ambiguous ciphers,
appears in one of her unique paintings. (Fig. 16)
58
Fig. 16. Edith Branson, [Red Star], n.d., oil on board, 29 ½ x 27 inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
59
In another, clearly a sailboat and a seagull—perhaps
the Sea Fantasy exhibited in 1935, inspired by her Beaufort
visits, incorporates ribbons and horizontal bands to suggest
sea and sky. Branson also painted the typical Cubist still life
of musical instruments and fruit, echoing Braque, and rarely
but occasionally incorporated natural elements—a leaf, a
bird reminiscent of Arp—into her compositions.
Branson’s stripe paintings, “cityscapes” from the
mid-‘30s, are abstractions painted with hard-edged vertical
stripes, echoing the work of Stieglitz, such as his “From the
Shelton” photographs of 1930-31, as well as the works
Weber and other modernists who sought not to simply depict
the City but capture its essence, its rhythms, its excitement
and depth. Branson’s linear, jagged “masculine” stripes are
quite different from her twisting, scrolling, “feminine” ribbon
work, nor are the palette and rhythm the same. (Fig. 17)
Instead of flesh and marble tones and red ribbons, the
stripes are in deep blues, greens, and purples, with
highlights –foregrounds—of golden or warmer tones, which
give the works depth as a cityscape.
60
Fig. 17. Edith Branson, [Cityscape], oil on board, 25 ½ x 29 ½ inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
61
Sometimes Branson combined the two genres: ribbons
encroach upon stripes and geometric shapes, as in Dancing
Rhythm (Fig. 18) and Conspiracy. (Fig. 8) Since Branson
gave vague titles to most of her works, these two are
charged with meaning, a meaning now opaque to us with the
latter, with its signifying title. Other geometric—cubist—
work incorporates broader swathes of color and form rather
than stripes or ribbons. In all the work however, both color
and rhythm are key components.
Although Branson exhibited in1941, at some point in
the ‘40s, when “she could no longer draw a straight line with
her brush,” Branson returned to her craft, weaving, which
she had studied at Columbia with Florence E. House.104 She
had several large looms, and as a highly accomplished
craftswoman taught weaving at the YWCA in New York.105
Ethnic patterns, openwork and unique designs are found in
her work and the abstraction inherent in textiles and carpets
likely appealed to Branson just as it did to other modernists
like Zorach, Delaunay and Klee.106 She wove and wore
62
kimonos. She also decorated furniture, designed, wove, and
sewed costume, and did reverse painting on glass.107
63
Fig. 18. Edith Branson, Dancing Rhythm, oil on board, 33 ½ x 24 inches; before 1935. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.
64
Part Three: The Straight Line Gone: The Late Years
In her later years after her husband’s retirement in the
early ‘50s, the Bransons remained in New York City on
Morningside Drive, but also had a summer home, “Thunder
Hill” named after a scenic location in the vacation
community of Blowing Rock, not far from major art and craft
centers like the influential Black Mountain and Penland.108
After her husband’s death in 1960, Branson lived in the
Branson family home in Chapel Hill with her sister Elizabeth,
a successful businesswoman. She obtained a passport in
1962, and she and her “Beppie” traveled abroad, by boat, to
Alaska, Mexico and Spain.109 Branson kept a studio at 209
Boundary Street, below the house, and much of her framed
work hung there. (Fig. 19) Her work was also shown in
several Chapel Hill exhibitions, including a two-person show
in 1967 with the noted UNC faculty artist (and former
student of Ossip Zadkine) Robert Howard, which the gallery
director called “the most exciting show we have held in the
Gallery in the three years it has been in existence.”110
65
Branson also held a one-woman show of four paintings at the
North Carolina National
Fig. 19. Edith Branson at Easel, n.d. photograph, North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill, Gift of Jacqueline C. Branson Smith.
66
Bank, which regularly exhibited art. “Composing a painting
was like composing music or a symphony,” she told the
reviewer, who commented that the forms seemed to float in
“organized luminosity.”111 The paintings of the artist who
“never had any desire to become a professional” were
enthusiastically reviewed in the local press. Exhibiting again
in the key feminist decade of the 20th century, the Sixties,
Branson may have felt a kinship with her younger fellows.
She had been there, been through the same struggles and
balancing acts.
In Edith Branson’s old age she pleaded with her son to
preserve her paintings, those she had not culled but kept,
framed, and carefully hung on her studio walls. In order to
begin the process of documenting her work, Charles Branson
Smith and his wife Jacqueline made photographs and slides
of her paintings, and Branson tried to sign some of them.112
They also tried to make recordings but her voice was too
weak. Their efforts have been noble. Her entire oeuvre,
with the exception of a few paintings she gave to Chapel Hill
friends, is in the Estate of the late Jacqueline C.B. Smith, who
67
was committed to fulfilling the promise made to the artist
years ago, to preserve and ensure a place for her work.113
Edith Branson Smith is buried in the historic Chapel Hill
Cemetery, near her husband and son. Not one museum
holds her work.114
39JBS40 Marchal E. Landgren, Years of Art: the Story of the Art Students League of New York (New York: Robert M. McBride, 1940), 77.41 See note 1. She also owned theoretical and contemporary works, such as The Color Primer, by Wilhelm Ostwald; Color in Everyday by Martin Fischer (1918); Cubistes, Futuristes, Passéistes, by Gustave Coquiot; and many Metropolitan catalogs; Pach inscribed his translation of the master colorist Eugene Delacroix’ Journal to Branson. In her Chapel Hill years, she acquired Winthrop and Frances Neilsen’s Seven Women: Great Painters (Philadelphia, Chilton Book Co. [1968, c1969]) which include her contemporary, Georgia O’Keeffe as well as Angelika Kauffmann, an artist in whom she had definite interest. See notes 43 and Fig. 3. One wonders how, in her old age, she dealt with the fact that O’Keeffe had achieved fame and she had not.42 Birren, Creative Color; Fry, Vision and Design.43 Possibly Angelika Kauffmann, “Trompette Romain” from Les Muses (1789) or Angelica Kauffmann by L. de Wailly (1838).44 See Linda Nochlin, “The Question of the Nude,” in Women, Art and Power and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 158-164.45 Six “innocuous” nudes exhibited in the 1922 Independents’ exhibition were ordered by the Waldorf-Astoria, the exhibition venue, to be “dressed or forever banned.” The SIA did take down the offending paintings and substitute them with other works by the artists. “Clash over nudes halted by artists,” New York Times 21 Mar. 1922, p. 15.48 JBS; Quoted in letter from her son, Charles Branson Smith, Dec. 7, 1987.49 JBS. Branson’s nanny was later pensioned, and given a small house in Chapel Hill or Carrboro, NC. Two studio portraits of African-Americans in the Smith collection may be two of these students.50 JBS.51 New York Times, 24 February 1921, p. 12.52 Society of Independent Artists catalogs: 1921 (5th) Nos. 82. Composition; and 83. Composition; 1924 (8th) Nos. 117, Composition, and 118 Composition; 1925 (9th) Nos. 126, Composition and 127, Composition; 1930 (14th) No. 108 Composition, and 109 Composition; 1931 (15th) Nos. 109 Composition, and 110, Composition; 1932 (16th) Nos. 117 Nude, and 118 Landscape; 1934 (18th) Nos. 106 Dancing Rhythm, and 107, Conspiracy, 108, Head (pastel), $20; 109 Nude, pastel, $20; 110, Reclining Nude, pastel; 1935 (19th) No. 87 Composition No. 1, $300; 88, Composition No. 2, $250; 1936 (20th) Nos. 107 Composition, $350; 108, Composition, $350; 1938 (22nd) Nos. 97, Forms No. 1, $500, and 98, Forms No. 2, $500, illustrated; 1940 (24th) No. 79, Forms in Space, $300; 1941 (25th) No. 81, Fragments, $500. For a concise record of Branson’s activity with the Independents, see Clark S. Marlor, The Society of Independent Artists: the exhibition record 1917-1944 (Park Ridge, N.J.: Noyes Press, c1984). I am grateful to several libraries for lending their Independents’ catalogs.53 Pach, Queer Thing, Painting. (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1938), 235. For a more recent commentary on the Independents see Francis Naumann, “The Big Show; the First Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists; Parts I and II” Artforum 17:8 (April 1979): 49-53.54 “Huge Pictures Jam Independent Show” New York Times 5 March 1924, p. 16. The largest show since the 1917 inaugural, the 1924 exhibited the work of 710 artists, ranging from the “deepest dyed conservatives” like Henri, to the “most modern moderns,” like Archipenko.
68
Conclusion: Putting Her in Her Place
Branson painted throughout most of her life, never
catering to the marketplace, never even writing memoir,
55 Other artists with North Carolina connections who exhibited with the Independents during the same years as Branson included Gregory D. Ivy (1932) and Mary Tannahill (1917, 1922 and 1925).56 “Abandon Alphabet in Independent Art,” New York Times 3 March 1925, p. 24.57 “Cubists Now Shun Independent Art,” New York Times 1 March 1930, p. 15; “10,761 View Art Exhibit,” New York Times 21 March 1930, p. 21.58 “Independents Set Art Show Record” New York Times 29 March 1931, p. N259 See note 34. A more sympathetic Times reviewer of the Independents was Elisabeth Luther Cary.63 See note 54.64 Howard Devree, “A Reviewer’s Notebook” New York Times 27 February 1938, p. 156.67 Emily A. Francis, quoted in Small Paintings for the Home (Springfield MA: Contemporary Arts and the George Walter Vincent Smith Gallery, 1938), 12.68 AAA, Emily Francis Papers, 1930-1964 Nov. 20-Dec. 9, 1933.69AAA, Emily Francis Papers, 1930-1964 Contemporary Arts Catalog of Exhibitors Christmas 1933, Dec. 11 to January 4.70 AAA, Emily Francis Papers, 1930-1964. A “roster of Introductions” was published with almost every catalog, 1931-1945.71 “Calendar of Current Art Exhibitions In New York,” Parnassus 7:2 (Feb. 1935): 32.72 Emily Francis Papers, D232 frame 0320 for announcement; D226 frame 547 for catalog, also in NAAA3 “Miscellaneous Exhibition Catalogs, Group 2, 1900-1945.”74 Howard Devree, “In the Art Galleries: a Reviewer’s Busy Week; Group Exhibitions and One-man Shows-Modernists Versus the Conventional” New York Times 3 February, 1935, Sec. 8 p. 875 The Fourteenth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings (March 24 to May 5, 1935) (Washington DC: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1935), “Gallery M” 109, No. 326 “Dawn”; Directory, 128: address c/o Contemporary Arts Gallery, 41 W. 54th St., New York City. See also Peter Hastings Falk, Biennial Exhibition Record of the Corcoran Gallery of Art 1907-1967 (Madison CT: Soundview Press, 1999), Branson entry, 78.76 Falk, Biennial, 23.77 JBS and the 1961 Foushee interview. We have not yet examined all the catalogs. See Art of Tomorrow: Hilla Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim. (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2005), 187, 254. Rebay also organized other small exhibitions of contemporary American artists, see Joan M. Lukach, Hilla Rebay: In Search of the Spirit in Art. (New York: George Braziller, 1983), 146.78 Hilla Rebay, “Non-Objective Art,” Southern Literary Messenger (Dec. 1942): 473-475.83 Ibid.84 Emily Francis Papers D224 frame 058-064; Letter from Mrs. Joseph W. Byrns Jr. to Emily Francis, dated April 5, 1937; and D232 frame 362.85 Small Paintings for the Home…, March 5-26, 1944 (Springfield MA: The Gallery, 1944). [ii-iii]86 “Women Radicals Open Art exhibit” New York Times 3 February 1935, p. N1.87 Amy J. Wolf, New York Society of Women Artists, 1925 (New York: ACA Galleries, 1987), 6-15. 88 Ibid., 10.89 Branson exhibited in at least 1937 and 1938, as her name appears in reviews. See Edward Alden Jewell, “Exhibition Opened by Women Artists,” New York Times 12 January 1937, p. 21; Margaret Bruening, “Current Exhibitions,” Parnassus 9:2 (Feb. 1937): 35-6; “Display is Opened by Women Artists,” New York Times 1 February 1938, p. 19; “N.Y. Women’s Annual,” Art Digest 12: 9 (Feb. 1, 1938): 14.
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always focusing on her work. An exceptional woman, not
content to stay in the shadow of her equally exceptional
husband, she pursued art and identity as a dedicated and
progressive artist. In her time, her work was exhibited,
90 Ibid., “Display.” 91 “Three New Group Shows,” New York Times, 6 February 1938, p. 160.92 Wolf, New York Society, 13. Wolf, as do I, calls for a re-evaluation of these neglected painters.93 JBS, photocopy. For chapter heading see note 73.94 See note 38.95 Miller, quoted in Rothschild 1974, p. 72. JBS says that Branson herself had plump hands and appreciated small hands and feet in a person.96 Marius de Zayas, ed. Francis M. Naumann, How, When and Why Modern Art Came to New York (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), p. 131. The book, written in 1940, includes numerous letters and documents, and is a useful mirror of the early modernist period.97 Greenough, 169-183; 546.98Appendix A, “Exhibitions at the Modern and De Zayas Galleries,” in De Zayas 1996, pp.134-155.99 op. cit. (Paris: Devambet, 1919).100 For Picabia’s, and other “color music” works see Kerry Brougher et al., Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and music since 1900 (Washington, D.C: Hirshhorn Museum; Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art; New York: Thames and Hudson, 2005), 40.101 Marius de Zayas, African Negro Art (New York: Modern Gallery, 1916); ibid., A Study of the Modern Evolution of Plastic Expression (New York: Pub. By “291”, 1913), 20, Pl. [4]. See also Ileana B. Leavens, From “291” to Zurich: the Birth of Dada (Ann Arbor MI: UMI Research Press, 1983), 61-64.102 Leavens 63-64; 165.103 Compare with Delaunay’s Rhythme of 1938.104 JBS.105 JBS.106 See, for example, Susan Day, Art Deco and Modernist Carpets (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2002).107 Branson to JBS, recalled in letter from JBS to PT, Nov. 12, 2004; reverse painting on glass at Boundary Street house.108 One wonders too if Branson had connections with any of the avant-garde artists at Black Mountain, about 80 miles southwest, which ran from 1933 to 1957. Jose De Creeft was a member of the Black Mountain group as well as on the board of the Independents while Branson was a member.109 Her 1962 passport indicates she was 5’ 4”, with green eyes and blonde hair.110 Letter from Banks O. Godfrey, Jr. to Edith Branson Smith, Nov. 6, 1967. Photocopy.111 “Artists Exhibit Work in Wesley Gallery” Chapel Hill Weekly 17 September 1967 and Ola Maie Foushee, “NC National Bank Shows Chapel Hill Artist’s Work” Chapel Hill Weekly 26 April 1967, p. 10.112 JBS said that Branson’s grandniece Elizabeth Falvey-Stevens of Maine, who currently has custody of the work, gave them the idea to transfer their original slides on disk.113 Jacqueline B. Smith generously allowed me to see Branson’s work, but I have only spent a few hours with the actual work. Fortunately, she diligently had all the work professionally photographed. In addition, she combed the Archives of American Art and other repositories for information on Branson, and shared information. Edith lived in Chapel Hill in the 60s, when I was a student in the Art Department (I took a course with Howard, with whom she exhibited.) I probably passed her on the street, or saw her at the Ackland Art Museum. How I regret not knowing this talented, interesting woman except though her daughter in law and her art. My thanks also go to Wildacres Retreat for its generous provision of a week’s residency, and to the University Libraries for allowing me time for the residency.
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appreciated, or if not appreciated at least given the
recognition of criticism, that is, work worthy of discussion.
Yet little more than a quarter of a century after her death,
the work of a woman who was part of the critical mass of
women artists active in the modernist period has no public
venue, no “room of her own.” Or, to paraphrase Linda
Nochlin, “Why are there still so few supporters of women
artists?” Certainly scores of women artists have been
packed into the canon--Artemisia, Kauffmann, Kahlo,
O’Keeffe—yet art historians and their students return again
and again to the Old Mistresses or, even worse, to the Old
Masters with a new feminist gaze. Ironically, although
feminist art history has been codified and a new canon has
command, innumerable women artists await discourse.
Perhaps in future academics or curators will follow the
commendable lead of one scholar in writing about forgotten
women artists, pursuing a more meaningful and equitable
scholarship to redress the “peculiar and perverse destiny of
114Her name and data, at least, is included in CLARA, the database of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
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so many women…whose lives were ignored and works
neglected.”115
As one who pursued art history in the era of Janson and
Gombrich, but who also came of age in the Sixties, I sensed
early on that something was amiss. Even though women
artists were never mentioned in any of my courses (with the
exception, possibly, of Cassatt,) for an American art course I
recklessly submitted a paper on Anna Hyatt Huntington116. I
had seen a Huntington bronze on campus and it intrigued
me. When I returned to the campus more than thirty years
later it was gone, relegated to storage. Indeed, it is time to
unpack Branson, like so many others, and put her in her
place.
115 Gail Levin, “Writing about Forgotten Women Artists: the Rediscovery of Jo Nivison Hopper,” in Singular Women: Writing the Artist (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) 130-145.116 On the other hand, my teachers, who were excellent, included Joseph Sloane, Philipp Fehl, John Schnorrenberg and Frances Huemer, the sole woman on the faculty at that time, to whom I dedicate this article.
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