EDITH BRANSON:

MODERN WOMAN,
MODERNIST ARTIST
by 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)

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.

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

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

5
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,

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

6
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

others who, like Arthur Dove, did not “lean on other things

for meanings.”10

7
 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

Arthur Wesley Dow who, though not a modernist, taught and

published widely on art education and expanded the

8
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

that time, was highly attractive to and supportive of women,

and --conveniently for her-- part of the Columbia milieu.20

9
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

Cubists’ investigation of form,” although his approach was

essentially naturalistic.25

10
 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

worth.”30 Branson, whose work is dominated by nudes, took

him at his word.

11
 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

picture plane. To build anew on that foundation is the next

problem.”34 Miller exhibited in the Armory Show, but not in

12
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

exceptions) did she make any effort to do so. Married to a

20
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

expense. Usually Branson included no illustration for her

entries, but the 1938 catalog illustrated one of her works, a

27
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

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

30
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.

Symphony in Grey and Green; 6. Orchestration; 7. Ode to

Music; 8. Conspiracy; 9. Form and Space; 10. Color

31
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

exhibition, Dawn, was selected for in the 14th Corcoran

35
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

took her daughter-in law Jacqueline there and said she had

36
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

Kandinsky’s work of the mid-‘20s and in Rebay’s work of the

‘40s and ‘50s.

37
 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

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

in purely abstract forms. It is her belief ‘that all the depth of

emotion that can be experienced through sound, can also be

38
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

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

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

39
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

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,

89
and abstract designs.” 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

40
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

out of fashion, or they were constrained by their domestic

lives.92

41
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

42
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)

43
44
Fig. 10. Edith Branson, [Hands], ca.1940, oil on board, 29 ½
x 23 ½ inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.

45
 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)

46
Fig. 11. Edith Branson, [Female Head; Self-portrait], n.d.,
graphite on paper, 18 x 24 inches. Jacqueline C.
Branson Smith Estate.

47
 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.

48
Fig. 12. Edith Branson, [City Nude on Stairs], ca. 1935,
oil on canvas, 30 x 36 inches. Jacqueline C.
Branson Smith Estate.

49
 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)

50
Fig. 13. Edith Branson, [Large Nude with Ribbons], n.d. oil
on board, 39x34 inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith
Estate.

51
Fig. 14. Edith Branson, [Two Nudes with Black], n.d. oil on
board, 35 ½ x 29 ½ inches. Jacqueline C. Branson
Smith Estate.

52
 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)

53
Fig. 15. Edith Branson, [Self-Portrait with Mirror], n.d., oil on
canvas, 35 x 29 inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith
Estate.

54
 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)

55
Fig. 16. Edith Branson, [Red Star], n.d., oil on board, 29 ½ x
27 inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.

56
 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.

57
Fig. 17. Edith Branson, [Cityscape], oil on board, 25 ½ x 29
½ inches. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith Estate.

58
 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

59
kimonos. She also decorated furniture, designed, wove, and

sewed costume, and did reverse painting on glass.107

60
Fig. 18. Edith Branson, Dancing Rhythm, oil on board, 33 ½
x 24 inches; before 1935. Jacqueline C. Branson Smith
Estate.

61
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

62
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.

63
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

64
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

65
Conclusion: Putting Her in Her Place

Branson painted throughout most of her life, never

catering to the marketplace, never even writing memoir,

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,

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

66
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

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.

67
68
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 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.)
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, 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, 276
12
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), 102
17
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.
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.html
21
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 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.
39
JBS
40
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.
46
Landgren, “Instructors,” in Years of Art, 112-116
47
Ibid. 90-91.
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.
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. N2
59
See note 34. A more sympathetic Times reviewer of the Independents was Elisabeth Luther Cary.
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.
63
See note 54.
64
Howard Devree, “A Reviewer’s Notebook” New York Times 27 February 1938, p. 156.
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).
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.
69
AAA, 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.”
73
Emily Francis Papers, D226 frame 548.
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. 8
75
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.
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.
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.
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.
98
Appendix 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.
114
Her name and data, at least, is included in CLARA, the database of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
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.