Mary Bryan Profile

Portrait of Mary Bryan by Marion Williams Steele

Mary Taylor Bryan was born in Carlsbad, New Mexico, in 1906 and died in Chatham, Massachusetts in 1978 at age 72.

Moving to Connecticut with her parents at an early age, she also lived with them in California before settling permanently in the East.  At the various schools she attended, Mary was always the top in her class in art, particularly leaning toward sculpture.  She studied in workshop situations with some outstanding sculptors of the time including Laura Fraser and Carl Illiver, and then at the New School of American Sculpture. 

In 1938, she moved with her husband, painter Alden Bryan, and their young son, to Gloucester, MA, where they returned for many summers.  There she began her career as a painter.  She and Alden operated the Bryan Gallery in Rocky Neck, MA, exhibiting their work for over 30 years.  While there, she studied painting with the legendary American artist Emile Gruppe, and also attended classes with Eliot O'Hara at his school for watercolor in Goose Rocks Beach, Maine. 

The Bryans settled permanently on a farm in Jeffersonville, VT, in 1939, again drawn to an area which had been a mecca for New England landscape painters for decades.

Unfettered by formal, academic training, Mary Bryan expressed herself masterfully in a variety of artistic media. Her hands were never idle. Early to rise, she would often be at her easel before drinking her morning coffee. 

During her career, Mary Bryan won two prizes at the American Watercolor Society, three awards at the National Association of Women Artists, two prizes at the Silvermine Guild, three first prizes at the North Shore Arts Association and two at the Allied Artists of American, including the Gold Medal of Honor for the Best in Show.

In Boston, Mary Bryan was a member of the Guild of Boston Artists and the Copley Society, at both of which she and her husband had two-artist exhibitions.

The Mary Bryan Memorial Gallery was built in her memory at Jeffersonville in 1984 by her husband, to show the finest Vermont and New England painters, and is now in its 32nd year.

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