Margaret Bruton's modernist portraits of her parents

From: If Pictures Could Talk: Stories About California Paintings in Our Collection (1989) 

by Walter E. Nelson-Rees and James Coran, p. 230.

In 1927, Margaret Bruton contributed Portrait of My Father to the Second Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists.  The San Francisco Chronicle appreciated Margaret’s modern, inventive style: “Margaret Bruton and others are almost revolters, while they taste new formulas.”¹  One critic remarked that the painting’s “planes and colors are direct and treated without affectation. The result is an admirable portrait.”² Another raved, “Portrait of My Father, by Margaret Bruton, is by far the best I have seen of her. I believe it is the finest portrait of the whole exhibit. It has breadth and solidity both in lines and color. It is realistic without exaggeration and the sentiment expressed is reserved.”³

Margaret’s portrait of her father was so successful that she decided to paint a companion piece of her mother which also received favorable reviews:  “Margaret Bruton’s My Mother was simple, forceful and altogether admirable.”⁴ A Carmel newspaper reported that the portrait “must be a very sympathetic likeness. There is something stolid and convincing about it.”⁵

From: If Pictures Could Talk: Stories About California Paintings in Our Collection (1989) 
by Walter E. Nelson-Rees and James Coran, p. 231.

Margaret eventually sold both portraits to art collectors Walter E. Nelson-Rees and James L. Coran, who had spent many years building a premiere collection of early twentieth century California art.  Knowledgeable and savvy collectors, they acquired as many as one thousand historic California paintings, including works by Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, Maynard Dixon, William Alexander Coulter, Arthur Matthews, William Hahn, Francis McComas, Selden Gile, and Louis Siegrist. The collection was valued at close to $45 million.  

In 1991, a devastating wildfire raged through the Oakland Hills, killing twenty-five people and destroying nearly four thousand buildings. One of the structures lost in the fire was the home of Nelson-Rees and Coran, where their priceless art collection was stored. Nothing could be saved. San Raphael art dealer John Garzoli described the significance of the tragedy: "They had number one works by so many artists that can't be replaced; this is a major loss to the American art world."  

Sadly, Margaret Bruton's celebrated portraits of her parents were destroyed in the 1991 Oakland Hills fire.
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¹San Francisco Chronicle, 20 March 1927, p. D7.

²Gene Hailey.  California Art Research.  San Francisco: Abstract from WPA Project 2874, 1937, p.7.

³The Argus, 15 Apr. 1927, p. 2

⁴The Argonaut, 12 May 1928.

⁵The Carmelite, 25 Apr. 1928.