The Good Book, 1941, egg tempera, 17 ft. x 20 ft.
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[ humanities ]
Through the Ages:
The Art and Murals of Eric Bransby
BY K A R I N L A Z A R U S A N D LU C I E N N E L A Z A R U S B E R COW
E
ric Bransby is one of the last living links to the
great age of American mural painting, an era
that flourished in the 1930s when artists like
Diego Rivera and Thomas Hart Benton were at the
height of their fame.
Bransby’s murals crisscross the country, and Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he now lives, bears
many of them. At the age of ninety-eight, he works
daily year-round in his unheated studio, creating studies for his next mural, and conducting weekly figure
drawing sessions.
In 2009, at the age of ninety-two, he was commissioned by the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center to create a mural for its seventy-fifth anniversary
celebration in 2012. He did. And he hasn’t stopped
working since.
During the 1930s when the Great Depression
gripped the U.S., Eric Bransby began to establish himself as one of the great American muralists. The economically depressed country inspired political works
of art like those of Bransby’s mentors, Jean Charlot
and Boardman Robinson, as well as the ever expanding mural movement coming out of Mexico into the
U.S. that began showing up on the nation’s buildings.
President Franklin Roosevelt’s enthusiastic New Deal
Programs sparked this movement. It was here that
Bransby gained recognition as one of the principal
muralists of his time. This period spans the height of
both his technical and spiritual expressions, wherein
his semi-abstract and concrete ideology seamlessly
aligns. This allowed him to fulfill his artistic credo—to
treat murals as symbols, making physical the emotional contrasts and drama of the human experience. He
became a central figure of the WPA (Work Projects
Administration).
Bransby is a major name and figure in the art world.
His powerful murals link us back to the great muralists
like Thomas Hart Benton and Josef Albers, who had a
substantial influence on the mural movement.
Bransby studied under Benton and Albers, among
the most influential teachers of his time, and to this
day, continues to work on commissioned pieces, and
create paintings and drawings in his spare time.
“One of the things that makes Bransby’s work
unique is he combines that Renaissance-based figurative tradition with what he learned from Josef Albers,” explains Blake Milteer, museum director at the
Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, home to many of
Bransby’s works. “He combines figures with a dramatic
sense of abstraction and of architecture, placing these
figures in a shifting kind of space.”
One of the major things that distinguishes his
work are his roots in the later years of the WPA, says
Milteer. “It’s where the heart and soul of his work is.”
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Westport Landing, 1942, egg tempera, 8 ft. x 14 ft.
Eric James Bransby was born in 1916 in Auburn,
New York. Both of his parents were from the British
Commonwealth. His mother, Lillian Holland Dowsett Bransby, was born in New Zealand and raised
in London. His father, Charles Carson Bransby was
born in Manchester, England, and raised in Scotland.
Shortly after Bransby was born, his family moved to
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and eventually ended up in
Council Bluffs, Iowa. In an area not overly exposed to
art culture, Bransby recalls the first time he realized he
was interested in the arts. “A friend took me to a puppet show in high school. As soon as I saw that show,
I was hooked.” He immediately began experimenting with marionettes himself. He constructed a small
theater, designed sets, and built marionettes eighteen
inches tall out of carefully cut wood and painted paper
maché to play in his own puppet show. Unfortunately,
his love for art was not shared by his parents who had
other hopes for their son. They were hoping for a more
traditional path, but Bransby just wanted to pursue his
dreams and be happy even if it didn’t mean making a
lot of money. He says, “I didn’t need the courage. By
the time I went to art school, I knew if I died in the
process, I was going to do it. I knew I’d never get rich
or really famous, but I would have a happy life.”
Bransby followed his heart and enrolled in the
Kansas City Art Institute in 1938, and immediately
knew this was exactly where he belonged. This was his
first formal introduction into professional art training,
and it was here that he was introduced to Thomas Hart
Benton, one of the most influential figures in mural
painting to date. Bransby studied under Benton, learning classic painting and drawing techniques, especially
focusing his early years on egg tempera techniques: a
permanent, fast-drying painting medium, mostly used
when constructing murals.
He also took detailed anatomy classes, as well as
learned the art of lithographic printmaking. “Benton
frequently painted in the studio working side-by-side
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with the students. Preliminary drawings, tone studies,
color studies, and rough clay models were required before the student even applied a brush to the canvas,”
Bransby recalls. During this time, he worked hard on
his craft, spending his days drawing figure sketches
from models, painting mostly with oil, practicing preliminary mural ideas, and sculpting in many mediums.
All of his hard work began to pay off in 1941, when
Benton sponsored a student art show at the Associated
American Artists galleries in New York, and submitted
two of Bransby’s tempera paintings.
In his senior year at the Art Institute, he worked
under Fletcher Martin, who replaced Benton, following his firing by the Institute Board. It was then that
he was permitted to join the Federal WPA Fine Arts
Program. During this time, Bransby submitted lithographic prints, figure drawings, and mural ideas to be
critiqued by Martin. It was his piece, Westport Landing,
that got him his first mural commission to be completed in Kansas City, Missouri, at Paseo High School.
The site of the mural has since been destroyed and the
portable egg tempera mural has disappeared.
In that same year, 1941, Bransby married Mary Ann
Hemmie, a water color student also attending the Institute. His father, a preacher, officiated the ceremony.
In 1942, after receiving much deserved recognition for
his epic design sense and patriotic vision, he was drafted and assigned to the graphics department at Fort
Leavenworth. During this period, he painted a series
of mural panels on the history of Fort Leavenworth
for the Command College library. After dark, Bransby
would go down into the latrines, the only place with
the lights still on, and continue to perfect his craft and
exercise his passion. He was known around the base as
“the latrine painter.” Despite being in the military, his
love of painting and artistic expression triumphed over
all obstacles.
In 1945, Bransby was discharged from the army,
and decided to move to Colorado Springs, Colorado,
Liberty, the Heritage Years (Liberty, MO). 1983, polymer tempera (one of 20 panels)
with his wife to further facilitate his work. That summer, they both enrolled at the Broadmoor Academy,
formerly a part of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts
Center. This is where he began working under Boardman Robinson, a muralist and figure draftsman. And
later with the French-American muralist, Jean Charlot, one of the founders of the Mexican mural school of
the early 1920s, who taught him how to paint frescoes.
“This appointment proved to be most fortunate for me,
as Jean coached me in fresco mural techniques as they
were practiced in Mexico in the 1920s.” His work with
Charlot eventually landed him a place at Yale University after receiving a grant, where he not only was a
student, but a teaching assistant as well. It was also at
Yale where he learned the importance of architecture
in relationship to his artwork. The mural and the architecture had to blend in a happy matrimony, not be
forced onto one another.
Bransby’s work is full of color and life. His pieces
detail historical events in a victorious manner, and
chronicle American achievements, movement, and
simplicity. His work is crisp and real, we can see the
human experience, hard work, and dramatic emotion
with an element of dreamlike characteristics to it.
Among Bransby’s achievements are the University
of Missouri’s Veatch Award for Distinguished Research and Creative Activity in 1977, a grant from the
Pollock Krasner Foundation, which is only offered internationally, and an honorary Doctorate of Humane
Letters from the University of Colorado in 1997.
Today, at the age of ninety-eight, Bransby still
strives to grow and expand his processes, and continues to teach a weekly figure drawing class in his studio.
“I try to make each mural a project that will somehow expand my abilities a little bit more,” he says. “Everything has to be a new adventure.”
He’s hoping to finish his latest mural, to be installed
at Colorado College, in time for his hundredth birthday.
20 Questions for Eric Bransby
1. When did you begin painting? I started painting when I was fifteen years of age, after seeing a marionette show in high school that inspired me. I painted
the paper maché I had made to build the marionettes.
2. Where do you create your pieces? I create pieces
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in my studio in Colorado Springs and also on various
walls across Colorado Springs.
3. How do you begin to work on a piece? To start,
I make preparatory drawings. If I am working on a
mural, these will be a much smaller representation of
what you will see on the wall. I then transfer this to the
larger space.
4. Is there one specific piece you have created that
was pivotal in your career? I feel my first mural I created on the WPA program in the early 1940s was the
most pivotal piece in my career. It was not only my first
commissioned piece and first professional mural, but
also it was painted for a high school in Kansas City,
Missouri, bringing creativity to the school.
5. What is your favorite piece and why? My favorite piece is mural painted for the library at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. It is semi abstract,
which was a different style for me, and the world, at
the time.
6. What is your greatest accomplishment? My
greatest accomplishment is the seventy-fifth anniversary mural for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center
at the age of ninety-six.
7. What are your criteria for choosing a subject or
design? The first step in choosing a subject is a design
sense to match the mural with the architecture. Second
is to select a subject matter that is appropriate to the
function of the building. Like my piece on the Fine
Arts Center, which depicts various performing art disciplines and important figures from FAC’s history.
8. What is your favorite subject and why? My favorite subject is usually historical. Something bringing
me back to when I worked with famed artists and a
time muralists across the country were just beginning
to find their feet.
9. Who are some artists that you love or have had
an influence on you and your work? Thomas Hart
Benton, Boardman Robinson, Jean Charlot, Josef Albers, have all had a profound influence on my work,
given that I had the great opportunity to work directly
with them, which has left a mark in my pieces, as well
as Piero della Francesca, and Jose Clemente Orozco.
10. What would you call your style? My style is
figurative and semi-abstract.
11. What do your pieces mean to you? My pieces
are a reflection of my living experience, things I experienced first hand or went through as a result of the
experiences of those around me.
12. Who or what inspires you? The human figure
inspires me. Moving or still, there is so much you can
do with it when creating a work of art. Expression,
emotion, experience, its all part of it. 13. What do you want your paintings to say? My
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work reflects the human condition, maybe everyday or
maybe deep and complex. We are all connected and all
going through our experiences on earth.
14. Do your pieces tell a story? Yes, mostly historical events that I am connected to in some way, or I feel
are representative of the human condition.
15. What about your family? I am widowed from
my wife Mary Ann, who was also an artist. She passed
away in 2011 after nearly seventy years of marriage.
During the time, I had been commissioned to work
on a mural for the FAC and she passed before I had
finished. Afterwards, I decided to include her in the
piece, and she is now one of the figure artists. I also
have a daughter.
16. Have you had any other jobs? I have been a
university professor as well as a professional muralist.
17. Where have you taught? I have taught at several institutions including twenty years at the University of Missouri [1965-1985]. My wife and I both accepted positions at Brigham Young University and I
was a teaching assistant at Yale University as well.
18. How has the art community changed over
time? For the better or worse? The art community has
changed in many ‘isms’ in my lifetime, from representational to abstract and back to representational. Not
necessarily for better or for worse, only changing in a
cycle.
19. Do you have any goals for future pieces? My
future projects are already in place. I am always thinking of the next thing. Right now, I am working on a
mural design piece. I am also working on a bas relief.
20. What was your most recent piece? The seventy-fifth anniversary mural at the FAC in Colorado
Springs.
To see more of Eric Bransby’s work please visit:
www.davidcookgalleries.com/artist/eric-bransby. •CSA
Karin Lazarus has been writing about cooking
and art for more than a decade. As a former
artist’s representative, she has always been
fascinated with the art world. You can reach her at
[email protected].
Lucienne Lazarus Bercow lives and works in
Boulder, Colorado. She graduated with a BA in Arts
and Sciences from George Washington University and
a background in psychology. She is interested in the
arts and learning about generational changes within the community.
You can reach her at [email protected].