Gladys Brannigan, 1882-1944

MC 61

About Gladys Brannigan (1882-1944):

Gladys Ames Brannigan was born June 14, 1882 in Hingham, MA. When she was seven years old, her family moved to New Hampshire. By 1900 Brannigan was living in Washington D.C., where she attended Georgetown University, earning her B.A. in 1903 and M.A. in 1904, and later studied at the Corcoran College of Art and Design. In 1910 she exhibited at the WCC, and in 1911 with the Society of Washington Artists, of which she was a member. She also worked as an artist on the staff of the Washington Evening Star. By 1921 Gladys had married Robert A. Brannigan, a patent lawyer, and was residing in New York City, where she studied at the Art Students’ League and the National Academy of Design with H.B. Snell.

In 1929 Gladys Brannigan moved to Portsmouth, NH, where she resided until 1941, at 32 Livermore Street. She also resided for a time at 4 Church St. in Dover, NH. During the 1930s she continued to keep a residence in New York City, traveling back and forth between Portsmouth and the city. Her driver’s licenses from this time show her holding both New Hampshire and New York State licenses for the years 1932-1934. She was also known to be the Head of the Art Department at Hollins College in Roanoke, VA at some point during this time, although the exact dates are unknown.

In 1930 Brannigan had two exhibitions, one, from March 4th to 17th in New York City at the Macbeth Gallery located on 15 East 57th St., and the other, from April 9th to the 22nd, in Boston at Doll and Richards, located at 71 Newbury Street. Both exhibits featured her watercolors, which appears to have been her preferred medium.

It was during the 1930s that Gladys Brannigan did the mural work for which she is best known. She was among three New Hampshire artists commissioned to paint a series of murals for the University of New Hampshire Library (then located in Hamilton-Smith Hall). The murals were painted under the direction of Omer T. Lassonde, State Supervisor of the New Hampshire WPA Art Project. Brannigan painted the murals for the Newspaper Room (Room 103). The remaining mural is in Room 141.

Others of her murals in NH were in Parker Hall, Keene, the Municipal Building in Dover, and a series mural of “Landmarks of Portsmouth” in the historic Livermore House. Portsmouth Public Library owns sketches for the murals that once adorned the Portsmouth Junior High School (now the Middle School).

Outside of NH her paintings are at George Washington University in Washington D.C.; Wesleyan College in Macon Georgia; the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, and Women’s University College in NYC. She also painted the reredos for St. John’s Church in Massena, NY, and has a lithograph in the collection of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.

Gladys Ames Brannigan died in New York City on April 27, 1944.

About the Brannigan collection:

The collection consists of a small number of items, including a few research notebooks and sketchbooks for the artist’s New Hampshire murals, a small amount of correspondence from and to Brannigan and her husband, some of her poetry, and photographs of the artist and of her work, and miscellaneous other items, such as her driver’s licenses from the early thirties. The bulk of the collection is from the 1930s.