The Artistic Brannans

© Mavis Brannan: August 2006 

My name is Mavis Brannan. I became a Brannan on 2nd April, 1945 in Lincoln and didn’t realise what an interesting family I had joined.

My father-in-law, Edward Eaton Brannan, was born in Nottingham on 2nd June 1886. His father was a ‘professor of music’ and at the time of Edward’s birth was playing with his orchestra at Eaton Hall. A telegram was delivered telling of Edward’s arrival, whereupon the host called for champagne to wet the baby’s head. Edward thereby acquired the second Christian name of Eaton! Circa 1890 to 1894, his father was in Hull with the Royal Artillery Band, then a similar appointment in Grimsby, where he was also a teacher of music.

Family myth has it that Edward was encouraged to paint by a scene painter at a Grimsby theatre, where he and a friend had part-time jobs. In 1916 Edward married Flory Rowston in Fulstowe, Lincolnshire, where her father had a cottage which was used to house the family when there was a risk of zeppelins bombing their Cleethorpes home. Her father refused to give her away – he said he wasn’t giving his daughter to any man!

Edward was now a civil servant working for the Ministry of Agriculture & Fisheries in Grimsby. He was transferred to North Shields where he soon had a circle of artistic friends. His earliest existing work is from 1921, the year his first son, Noel was born on Christmas Day. Edward talked of sketching holidays with his friends at Bellingham. They all seem to have been etchers and one must have had a press. Examples of their work exist – W. S. Wood, W. W. Ward, Charlie House and Charles A. Smith. Also, a watercolour by W. S. Wood dated 9th September 1926 is inscribed, “to my old friend Edward Brannan ‘The Last Stand’”. This was when he left Northumberland to take up a new post in Grimsby. Charlie House was a fellow Civil servant and Godfather to Noel. Noel records that Charlie House moved to Aberdeen and he eventually met him in London during the war when they stayed in the basement of 55 Whitehall. Edward and Charlie were there for meetings, Noel went along for the ride.

On the back of one sketch Edward has written “No. 1 of four sketches at Seaton Sluice on 24th April 1926. W. Wood and I had a very nice time – the weather being sunny, but turned rather chilly later on”. Another said “Seaton Sluice May 15/26 – No. 3 sketch. Very cold day”. Noel comments “these are significant as an indication of how my father worked, rattling off three or four water colour sketches at one session, in contrast to the tight drawings for etching at that time. The vintage style continues after 1926 in Lincolnshire, gradually changing into a more individual approach, still broad washes with a number 14 sable, but a change of colour range and feeling”.

In December 1926 Edward’s second son, Peter, was born and to some extent Noel’s account of his own early life also applies to Peter’s. Noel’s record says: “In 1926 we moved to Cleethorpes, where I grew up in a very art orientated household. I would return home from school to find my father busy in his studio. He had a little following of ‘disciples’ whom he encouraged and helped, including two of my school friends who were studying art for school certificate. Many who came to the house were artists, one of whom went off to Tahiti in a sailing boat to follow the trail of Gaugin! Very romantic stuff for a teenager; I began to read about the lives and work of modern artists. The writings of R. A. Wilenski, especially his ‘Modern French Painters’ and a 1938 Pelican Special ‘Modern German Art’ were a major influence, but it was not till about 1940 that I began to paint”.

When war broke out in 1939, Noel left school to take up a post with the Admiralty in Peterborough and Peter was twelve years old . During the years after leaving North Shields, Edward initiated a ‘Daub Club’, members of which each placed a painting or drawing in a packet under a code name. The packet was passed round among members who criticised each other’s work anonymously. Noel introduced a similar club, the Folio Society, in Hinckley, using code names Lindum or Pere Ubu. Edward also joined the Folio Society under code name Rutland.

Noel was eventually transferred by the Admiralty to Lincoln, where I had the good fortune to meet him in 1942 at the Montana dance studio, learning the Victor Sylvester style of dancing. I fell for him on sight as he hung up his hat, coat and walking stick. He danced with me often, but asked me out through my sister! He attended Lincoln Art School in the evenings and went home to Cleethorpes at the weekends to spend time with his father and brother painting. The three of them also built a kiln in their garden, made pots from clay dug from local fields and fired the kiln with firewood gleaned from hedges and woodland. At this time they devised a Brannan logo – a triangle with a B in the centre and the individual’s initial – E, N or P, below the base. In 1943, Noel made a record of his pottery experiments, with diagrams and technical details. There are notes from all three Brannans with the records – the last by Noel on 29th February 1948, saying that ‘kiln number 5 is still in existence’, and further describing their efforts and results

In 1944, Thomas Hennell visited Grimsby as an official war artist and Edward was asked to show him round Grimsby Docks. Hennell had been in Iceland and arrived in Grimsby on an old Rudge Whitworth bicycle, after working the North East coast on his way home to Wrotham in Kent. He went out sketching with the three Brannans and particularly enjoyed Noel’s mother’s apple pies. Hennell introduced a new technique to them – the use of a soft pencil dipped into a mixture of Indian ink and watercolour. During his time in Lincoln and at weekends in Cleethorpes, Noel carried on painting. He records that their work was entirely based on drawings from nature, without reference to photographs or other sources. He says: “it was very much a family affair, my younger brother (Peter) was talented from a very early age”.

Noel and I were married on 2nd April 1945 after he was transferred to the Edinburgh office. He rang me to say he wasn’t going there on his own, we’d get married at Easter! Something of a shock to my parents!

In Edinburgh our married life began to take shape, I took a job with the Home Office at the Scottish W.V.S. Headquarters. Noel was a good husband, a witty and intelligent man, a thinker, abstracted when painting, but always concerned for my welfare. We had a good life, going to theatres where many shows had their debut and visiting my father’s cousin in Fife – another fruitful area for painting. Noel was granted permission to paint on the site of Niddry colliery, Newcraighall, and on 11th June we were taken down the pit – an interesting but nervous experience. By the end of 1945 the Admiralty closed the Edinburgh office and moved personnel to headquarters in Bath.

In Bath, a big change of atmosphere, the softer climate and landscape didn’t suit me, but Noel painted all round the district as usual. I took a part time job with the Inspector of Taxes Office and tried to cope with the three square inches of anonymous meat which was our ration for the week. We still visited theatres, but there was nothing like the variety of shows that Edinburgh had provided. We rowed on the river Avon with friends, had long bike rides and walks in the countryside, all adding to Noel’s folio of paintings.

From Bath, in 1947, Noel considered a move to the Ministry of National Insurance, entailing a stay in Blackpool, but was keen to find a way of life which gave him more time for painting. To this end he applied for and was awarded a grant for a five year course for National Diploma in Design and Art Teacher’s Diploma. He resigned from the Civil Service and became a full time student at Lincoln School of Art. The Lincoln Art School had just appointed a lecturer in painting and drawing a Czechoslovakian refugee, Anton Bartl, who had studied art in Prague under Kokoschka. Polish officers who attended classes added to the European atmosphere. Noel took N.D.D. in painting and went on to Leicester College of Art for A.T.D. Two pictures painted before he became a student sold, one at the Royal Academy, and another to the Usher Art Gallery, Lincoln

Also in 1947, our first child, Jane, was born. As he comments in his records, to be a student at 25, with a wife and child, having to think about passing exams and eventually finding a job, took some of the gilt off the gingerbread of being free to paint.

Peter in the meantime began to attend evening classes at Grimsby School of Art, to the detriment of his work at school. In 1944 he became a full time student and also began to collect antiques, encouraged by the Principal, A. E. Wade. He continued to work and study during his National Service, the first year in the coalmines in Sheffield, where the seeds were sown for mining and industrial pictures. The next two years in the Royal Army Medical Corps took him to Farnham, close to London theatres and art galleries, to Chester and Hereford, which was pleasing to him because of his interest in architecture. He qualified as a nursing orderly and acquitted himself well, in spite of being “distinctly unmilitary by nature”. He returned to Grimsby in 1948 to complete his course there, before going on to Leicester College of Art.

In Lincoln we lived with my parents whilst Noel was at the Art School and in January 1949 our son, Peter, was born. In November that year my parents left for New Zealand and Noel and I, with our two children, rented a cottage in Sudbrooke. This cottage had electricity, but no water in the house which had to be carried from a tap by the gate. Filling an old fashioned copper for the family wash was quite a task, but we did develop an adequate routine and eventually, water was introduced into the house. Noel rented a studio in Tentercroft Street, Lincoln, where he and his fellow students spent much time. He completed, successfully, his courses at Lincoln and Leicester and got a job as art teacher at Westfield Boys School, Hinckley. He had a small B.S.A. Bantam motor cycle on which he travelled to and from home and, unfortunately, in his last week at Leicester, was knocked off it at Stragglethorpe crossroads on the A46, sustaining a fractured skull. During the summer recess he gradually recovered and was able to begin his job in Hinckley in the autumn term.

In the meantime, Edward, with his wife and Peter, moved to Welbourn in 1951 and Peter had a teaching post in Newark. Although Peter’s home was in Welbourn, he rented a cottage in Mount Lane in Newark. His studio there overlooked the churchyard and he painted a trompe l’oeil mural on the winding staircase, an Italian vista, and began to fill the place with his antique collection.

All three Brannans produced copious work in Lincoln, Sudbrooke and Welbourn..

Edward was a member of the Lincolnshire Artists Society in the 1930’s and by 1948,
Noel and Peter were also members. The recent Centenary celebrations of the L.A.S. included a book by Edward Mayor “Lincolnshire Artists, One Hundred Years 1906 – 2006”. This shows illustrations of Brannan works and comments by critics. Peter became President in 1992, two years before he died. The Usher Art Gallery, Lincoln, has a collection of Brannan paintings.

Noel and I, with our children, moved to Hinckley. Accommodation and property were hard to come by, but between 1952 and December 1959 we progressed through furnished rooms and Council House to our own property in Burbage.

As a teacher, Noel found he was too public a figure to set up his easel outdoors locally, so worked in the studio from jottings in pocket sketch books, doing fewer landscapes and more portraits and figure compositions. Once he had a car, Nuneaton, with its Mines, tile works, chimneys, quarries, canals and areas of wasteland, became his favourite sketching ground. His “Coalmine at Nuneaton” was exhibited at the New English in 1966, then sent around the country in an Art Exhibitions Bureau travelling exhibition. He kept up his membership of the Lincolnshire Artists Society and was Chairman of the Hinckley Art Club. He considered his most important with the art world to be the A.I.A. (Artists International Association). This was an avant-garde society founded in 1931, run by professional artists, many of them well known. For twenty years or so his work was influenced by this connection. The A.I.A. closed down in 1971 when the lease of the gallery in Lisle Street expired. Peter was also a member of the A.I.A.

On 21st May 1957 Edward died aged seventy, leaving a large gap in the lives of his sons.

In October 1957 Noel’s “Halfpenny Bridge” Bath, was published in “Young Artists of Promise”, a Studio book. Edward’s “Willow Tree” was reproduced in The Studio with a short obituary.

In 1960 Peter became a member of The Royal Society of British Artists. Exposure in mixed exhibitions, the Royal Academy, the A.I.A. and others led to commissions and his first one-man show at the Trafford in 1960. These continued into the 1970’s, all successful as far as sales went, but Peter was reluctant to move into the limelight, to attend openings and meet his patrons.
Eric Newton bought one of Peter’s paintings for someone at a Trafford exhibition and said of Peter “he was to Newark what Utrillo had been to Montmartre and, like Boudin, watched the grey-green sea lashed by cold winds under a grey sky”. In June 1962 Peter gained a commission to paint at Capesthorne Hall, the seat of Sir Bromley-Davenport, and spent two days there as his guest. Noel accompanied him and stayed in the district, doing some drawings of his own, one of which he gave to Lady
Bromley-Davenport.

Noel and Peter continued to produce paintings throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s. In 1960 and 1961 Noel lectured for the University o Leicester at R.A.F. Cottesmore on “Content of Art” and “Aspects of Art” and also judged pictures at Oakham School in May 1961. In 1973 their mother died and Peter carried on living at the family home in Welbourn, where he developed a regular painting routine. He remained a bachelor and had a wide circle of friends, especially in the antiques world.

Noel’s artistic activities had the interruptions of being a husband and father, but once the children were independent, an upstairs room was allocated as a studio. In 1975 Noel had a lone trip to Dieppe where he produced a number of paintings. Our annual holidays usually had a theme, one following R. L. Stevenson’s “Travels with a Donkey”, another Vincent Van Gogh’s life through Holland, Belgium and France.

Noel retired from teaching in 1980 and Peter followed suit a few years later. They each carried on their artistic activities in their own way and were in constant communication, but the camaraderie which existed when their father was alive was much diluted.

Peter died on 1st December 1994, leaving a great many paintings. These were deposited with the Goldmark Gallery in Uppingham, where a retrospective exhibition of his works was held in 1995. Sales resulted from this exhibition and Peter’s pictures can still be seen at the Goldmark Gallery

Dealing with Peter’s death and possessions and dismantling the family home had a dispiriting effect on Noel in the three years it took to complete. There was also a quantity of their father, Edward’s, work, which was added to a similar quantity already in Noel’s possession. Noel had always felt that Edward’s paintings deserved wider recognition and set-to to catalogue them. Needless to say, his own work was neglected at this time, but did continue, though rather spasmodically.

By 2001, Noel’s health had deteriorated and he died on 7th August 2001. Again, the Goldmark Gallery put on a successful retrospective exhibition in October 2004 and some of Noel’s paintings can be viewed there.




Bibliography.

Grant J Waters
Dictionary of British Artists working 1900 – 1950

Who’s Who in Art

Prof. Dennis Child.
Painters in Northern Counties of England and Wales. University of Leeds.




Exhibitions.

Royal Academy:1905 – 1970

1. Edward E. Brannan.

1947: Lincolnshire Landscape. RA Cat no125
1951: Hewitt’s Wood. (Pen and Wash) RA Cat no 869
1952: The Fallen Tree RA Cat no828 
          Welbourn, Lincolnshire. RA Cat no 1144
1955: Dismembered Barge. (Pen and Wash) RA Cat no 980


2. Peter Brannan.

1953: Beach Scene. RA Cat no 417
          Interior. RA Cat no 485
1954: Low Tide RA Cat no 362
1955: Children with Masks RA Cat no 696
1957: Newark Landscape. RA Cat no 285
1958: Snowy day RA Cat no 82

1960: Kitchen Interior RA Cat no 341
          Coal Mine RA Cat no 573
1961: Newark School RA Cat no 113
          Interior RA Cat no 711

1963: East Coast Beach scene RA Cat no 245


3. Noel Brannan.

1948: Breakwater, Blackpool RA Cat no 928





© Mavis Brannan. August 2006