Sisters in Art

The Biography of Margaret, Esther, and Helen Bruton

Wendy Van Wyck Good

• Publisher: West Margin Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781513289526
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Biografie in ambito artistico

With color photographs and artwork, Sisters in Art is the first biography to capture the lives and works of Margaret, Esther, and Helen Bruton, three exceptionally talented sisters whose mark on the California modernist art scene still impacts our world.

Nominee, 2021 New Deal Book Award

"Great stories abound in this book, including the goings-on of the 'Monterey Group' of painters and an encounter with a teetotaling Henri Matisse at a North Beach cocktail party. If California had a Belle Époque, this was it. From their chubby-cheeked 'Gibson Girl' childhood through their sunlit dotage, the Brutons were exemplars of many aspects of California history and, in recent years, overlooked. Good's book corrects this."
— Library Journal

"Both beautiful and substantial, Sisters in Art: The Biography of Margaret, Esther, and Helen Bruton... would make a great gift for the art lover in your life […] The book contains detailed-but-lively accounts of the sisters' lives and work, and is filled with black-and-white and color plates of their art."
— The Carmel Pine Cone

"An illuminating and heroic work... [Good] writes vividly about how all three Brutons continued to make art until the very end of their lives."
— Jasmin Darznik, New York Times –bestselling author of The Bohemians

"For decades, Margaret, Esther and Helen Bruton have been relegated to a side note in California art history. Yet their work has found new appreciation in the 21st century, and their fascinating lives and impressive artistic achievements are finally coming back into the light."
— Carmel Magazine

Educated at art schools in New York and Paris, the Brutons ran in elite artistic circles and often found themselves in the company of luminaries including Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Henri Matisse, Armin Hansen, Maynard Dixon, Imogen Cunningham, and Ansel Adams. Their contemporaries described the sisters as geniuses, for they were bold experimenters who excelled in a wide variety of mediums and styles, each eventually finding a specialization that expressed her best: Margaret turned to oil paintings, watercolors, and terrazzo tabletops; Esther became known for her murals, etchings, fashion illustrations, and decorative screens; and Helen lost herself in large-scale mosaics.

Although celebrated for their achievements during the 1920s and 1930s, the Brutons cared little about fame, failing to promote themselves or their work. Over time, the "famous Bruton sisters" and their impressive art careers were nearly forgotten. Now for the first time, Sisters in Art reveals the contributions of Margaret, Esther, and Helen Bruton as their works continue to inspire and find new appreciation today.

The Bruton House in Alameda

CHAPTER ONE An Attic in Alameda

(1894–1916)

The house at 1240 St. Charles Street in Alameda, California, is a gracious Colonial Revival mansion set back slightly from the tree-lined street on a generous lot. Located in the city’s coveted Gold Coast, an upscale neighborhood with a concentration of elegant homes, the house is one of the largest in Alameda at more than 4,000 square feet. On the top floor of this stately residence is a large, light-filled attic which more than a century ago was brimming with artistic dreams and creative experimentation.

The attic’s first occupants were three inventive sisters—Margaret, Esther, and Helen Bruton—who used the space to sketch, paint, and sculpt. Their attic art studio was a creative laboratory of sorts for the little girls, who experimented with different materials and assisted each other with projects well into their adult years. Some critics have suggested that this studio was the birthplace of the Brutons’ artistic spirit: “In the old family home in Alameda… the three Brutons, Margaret, Helen, and Esther, are working at present at fresco, pottery and prints… [in] an attic three flights up, now a studio, where Margaret has painted fresco [sic] on the plastered walls.” The attic was a safe space where the sisters had unlimited creative freedom and could “valiantly experiment in new media and manners.” It was so deeply connected with the sisters’ artistic development and achievement that the city of Alameda designated the Bruton house a historic monument in 2012.

The sisters’ father, Daniel Bruton, had this elegant home built for his family in 1897. Born in Dublin in 1839, Bruton was an Irish immigrant whose story is the quintessential example of the American dream; he arrived in the United States as a young boy and his large family settled in Brooklyn. Despite his humble beginnings, he moved to California, became an extremely successful executive for a tobacco company, and built one of the largest mansions in one of San Francisco’s most affluent suburbs.

We know little about Daniel Bruton’s early years other than what appears in census records. His family’s arrival in New York, sometime in the late 1840s, coincided with the onset of the Great Famine in Ireland (1845–1852) and the resulting mass exodus of Irish immigrants to the United States. There may have been another pressing reason for the Bruton family’s departure from Ireland, as Daniel’s father, John, supported the Irish independence movement, and the Bruton home in Dublin had become a meeting place for rebellious thinkers. Rallying for Irish independence was dangerous at the time, and John’s controversial political views meant that he was banned from working for the British government. A move to the United States was likely seen as a good option by the Bruton patriarch, who needed to maintain his livelihood to support his growing family.

By 1880, John Bruton’s children were industrious adults pursuing a wide variety of interests and professions in their adopted home of Brooklyn. According to census records, sons Thomas and John were “commercial travelers” (traveling salesmen), George was a printer, William was an artist, and Henry and James worked in tobacco. Over time, this generation of Brutons scattered across the globe, moving as far away as Chicago, London, and Australia. Daniel was hired as a West Coast agent of the Baltimore-based Marburg Brothers tobacco company and moved to California. Daniel had been fascinated with the West Coast since he was a boy, when some native Californians visited his Brooklyn neighborhood and shared glamorous tales about their home state. He first appears in the San Francisco directory in 1878, and in 1882 he was joined by his brother Thomas, who worked various jobs before pursuing a career in journalism. Gradually, other Bruton family members made their way to California, including Daniel’s widowed mother, Ann.

Daniel Bruton

In 1886, Daniel and Thomas Bruton left the bustle of San Francisco and relocated to the quieter, more genteel suburb of Alameda, where they rented a house near the train station. Alameda was a highly desirable place to live, boasting small town charm while being close to urban centers. Located on an island situated just south of Oakland and east of San Francisco, Alameda was within easy commuting distance to both cities by train or ferry. It was also a resort destination at the time, featuring bathhouses, ballrooms, saloons, and amusement parks that attracted celebrities like Ethel Barrymore, Al Jolson, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Jack London. Alameda’s best-known resort, Neptune Gardens, was designated the “Coney Island of the West,” and attracted thousands of visitors each weekend.

In 1891, Daniel’s employer, Marburg Brothers, was absorbed by the American Tobacco Company, which at the time owned 90 percent of the tobacco industry in the United States, and eventually acquired the popular Lucky Strike brand. Following a promotion, Daniel made a trip back to New York to visit a friend, the physician Robert Bell. Like the Brutons, the Bells were Irish immigrants who had settled in Brooklyn. While there, Daniel developed romantic feelings for his friend’s daughter, the “charming and accomplished” Helen Jane Bell. Despite their considerable age difference—he was nearly fifty-four and she was twenty-seven—Daniel and Helen were married in Brooklyn in April 1893.

Margaret Bruton’s portrait of her mother, Helen Bell Bruton

Daniel Bruton returned to Alameda with his new bride and the couple moved into the house that he and Thomas were renting near the train station. When Helen became pregnant, she returned to New York to be surrounded by her family at the birth. The Brutons’ first child, Margaret, was born in Brooklyn on February 20, 1894. Named for her maternal grandmother, Margaret was always called “Marge” or “Margie” by her family and friends. Helen Bruton and her baby daughter remained in Brooklyn for almost two years; according to the local paper, Daniel Bruton didn’t set eyes on his first child until October of 1895, when she was twenty months old. The Brutons’ second daughter was born in Alameda on October 18, 1896. She was named Anne after her paternal grandmother, but always went by her middle name, Esther, or her nickname, “Ecky.” At this point, Daniel realized that he required a proper house befitting his affluence, social status, and growing family. Construction began on the elegant mansion on St. Charles Street soon after Esther’s birth. In August 1897, the Alameda Daily Argus informed its readers that “Daniel Bruton is having a very fine house built on St. Charles Street.” Nearly three months later, the newspaper noted the family’s arrival in the neighborhood. The Brutons’ third child, also a girl, was born just a few months later, on February 7, 1898. She was named Helen Bell after her mother.

Daniel, Helen, and their three daughters led a comfortable existence in Alameda. Daniel was a good provider, and his daughters had every advantage and opportunity that could be expected among women of their class. As affluent young ladies, their regular attendance at luncheons, tea parties, and dances was noted in the society columns of the Alameda newspapers. The family traveled extensively, sometimes for months at a time. They vacationed at Howell Mountain, near the city of Saint Helena in Napa Valley, and at Duncan Springs in Mendocino County. They also visited their seventy-seven-acre hay ranch at Thompson’s Station in Napa County, which served as home base for Daniel’s mother, Ann. The Brutons spent considerable time on the Monterey Peninsula; sometimes they took the train to Salinas, and other times they traveled in an open-air, horse-drawn buggy more than one hundred miles to Monterey. The sisters had fond memories of these journeys; Helen made several drawings of her family, including their dog, riding in their carriage with a towering pile of trunks fastened to the back.

The Bruton sisters, 1898

A 1906 photograph shows the elegantly dressed Bruton family posing with their horse and buggy next to the Monterey Custom House. They spent a full year in the seaside town of Pacific Grove from 1906 to 1907. The family was in Pacific Grove during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, when one of the sisters was thrown from her bed by the shaking. The Brutons experienced more drama the following year when Helen became severely ill with abdominal pain. According to family legend, she was turned away from the closest hospital—at the nearby Presidio Army Base in Monterey—because the hospital refused to admit female patients. Since there were no other medical facilities in the area, Helen was laid out on the kitchen table where a local physician performed an emergency appendectomy. Fortunately, Helen survived and seemed to suffer no ill effects from the procedure.

The Bruton family in front of the Monterey Custom House, 1906

In May 1907, after their sojourn in Pacific Grove, the family traveled to Brooklyn to visit Mrs. Bruton’s family. Although they had planned to stay only for the summer, the Brutons remained on the East Coast for an entire year. According to Margaret, she attended classes at the prestigious Art Students League in New York, even though she was only thirteen years old. When the Brutons returned to their home on St. Charles Street in April 1908, they had been away from Alameda for nearly two years. Shortly upon their return to California, the family hosted a visit from Mrs. Bruton’s younger sister, Marion Bell, who lived in Hawaii. Marion was a teacher at the Honolulu Normal School and an “amateur actress of undoubted ability.” The following year, Marion married Robert C. Stackable, and the couple had one child, John Robert or “Jack,” who later moved to California and eventually became one of the Bruton sisters’ closest relatives.

Overall, the Bruton girls’ childhood was pleasant and secure. They had a very close and empathetic relationship with each other and, surprisingly, they rarely fought. As Helen recalled, “we really got along remarkably well. It was awfully strange as kids growing up. We didn’t fight the way most kids do, especially girls… but we all liked to do the same things and we’d make a lot of mess around the place. If one started in making toys out of dough… then the others would all have to butt in.” This genial friendship—and their tendency to “butt in” when one started a project—was the beginning of a supportive and symbiotic relationship that would last for the rest of their lives.

The Bruton sisters’ interest in art began at an early age. They made things with their hands from the time they were toddlers, including, as Esther recalled, “drawing animals with colored crayons on the window shades.” Helen’s first memory of expressing her creativity was in the classroom: “The earliest artwork that I can remember in school was being permitted to draw Christmas wreaths on the blackboard in colored crayon. And that set me up practically for art.” By the time they were teenagers, the sisters’ developing talents were being publicly recognized. Margaret received a medal in a pet poster contest in 1910 at age sixteen, and nineteen-year-old Esther won first prize in a 1916 poster contest for the Oakland Chamber of Commerce. An article about her achievement, along with her photo, appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Bruton sisters playing dress-up

The Brutons’ collective childhood and the hours they spent in their attic art studio were formative. Their sisterly support system, combined with unwavering encouragement from their mother, resulted in a willingness to try new techniques and materials. At a very young age, the sisters felt free to take risks and make mistakes without fear of judgment or disapproval. There were artistic failures, to be sure, but they always learned from them. When their sculpted dough figures fermented and expanded beyond recognition, “the Brutons, being practical little girls, scurried around in search of more permanent and suitable materials for their purposes.” The sisters’ fearless, hands-on, and tactile approach to art was the beginning of what would become their unique “sensitivity to the demands of material.”

Before long, all three girls wanted to become professional artists. Their father discouraged their ambitions, perhaps in part because two of his brothers had been not-particularly-successful artists by trade and both had died young. William Bruton, who contributed humorous illustrations to magazines including Puck and Harper’s Weekly and illustrated a children’s book, died at the age of twenty-nine. Another brother, George, a writer and cartoonist, had moved to San Francisco in 1886 in an effort to improve his failing health. He died of consumption and heart disease only a year later at the age of twenty-seven. While the financial struggles and early deaths of William and George prejudiced Daniel against the idea of his daughters pursuing art as a profession, the girls’ artistic dreams were enthusiastically supported by their mother, who “encouraged them, cared for their home and fostered plans for their art studies so that each of the sisters felt free to pursue her career despite the father’s opposition.” Esther described their mother a...