Robert Bolling Brandegee

Robert Bolling Brandegee (l849-1922)

(A Hartford Biography)

© Gary W. Knoble, 2014

Robert Bolling Brandegee was one of the most loved painters of “The Hartford Art Colony”, as Helen Fusscas has named them. He was widely admired by the painters and critics of the time but seldom made any attempt to promote his own art, preferring to boost that of others. He lived in Farmington most of his adult life where he taught generations of women at Miss Porter’s School. He was primarily know for his portraits and figure paintings but also produced a large body of landscapes of the Farmington Valley and the Twin Lakes region of Connecticut where he had a summer home.

He was born in Berlin, Connecticut on April 4, 1849, the son of Elisha and Florence S. Brandegee. He was the younger brother of Charles Brandegee, who was a probate judge and the Town Clerk of Farmington. Much information of his early life comes from his diaries and sketchbooks begun when he was about 14. He also wrote an unpublished autobiography in 1918. As a boy he studied at the Worthington Academy in Berlin and the Edward I. Hart’s School for Boys in Farmington. His family had an avid interest in botany and his Aunt Sarah Tuthill had taken drawing lessons. His sister Florence spoke of his childhood in an addendum to his Hartford Courant obituary. She said he displayed a marked inclination to art and while attending Hart’s School would tramp the fields and woods every opportunity he could get, just to sketch landscape scenes and any object that would claim his attention from observation. “Robert was a studious boy at nature. He gave almost all his spare moments to trying his hand at drawing pictures of bits of countryside scenery. It was not unusual for him to go out and study his surroundings, whether they be in hills or woods, for hours, until sketching what he saw became a passion to the boy. His talent was rather remarkable for so young a boy. He took to studying drawing very seriously, and worked hard at developing his latent powers by sketching the landscape.”

Charles Ferguson, in his excellent essay written for a 1971 retrospective of Brandegee’s work at the New Britain Museum of American Art, notes four strong characteristics of Brandegee, a long interest in drawing and painting, his study of birds and botany, a sense of humor, and an interest in poetry and prose. To this should be added a fifth, his love for music.

He first studied watercolors with J. Hill in Nyack New York and later in New York City with T. C. Farrar. When he was about 20 he went to Hartford to give drawing lessons. When asked by the assembled ladies who were to be his students what was his system of drawing he says, “I replied (rather happily) ‘after the manner of John Ruskin.’ They looked at each other thoughtfully and nodded assent……we had a beautiful time with more pleasure to myself than profit.” He continued his studies in New York and moved back to Hartford to start an art class. He was encouraged to pursue his studies in Europe and with local support, on April 29, 1872 he, and his Hartford artist friends, Montague Flagg, Charles Noel Flagg, and William Bailey Faxon left for Paris to study with Jacquesson del la Chevreuse (who had studied with Ingres). Charles Foster, who knew them from Hartford, joined them in Paris. Dwight Tryon also joined them in 1876. Brandegee stayed in Paris for nine and a half years.

Both Brandegee’s wit and his poetic talent are apparent in a poem written in 1872 when he was beginning his studies in Paris.

The eyes are askew

And aint’t looking at you

And the head don’t resemble the plaster.

The jaw and the ear they look very queer

Not a bit like the work of a master.

The dark part of the head, as I often have said

Where the light and shade come together

Mark a vigorous mark, tw’en the light and the dark

And not with an edge like a feather.

Too dark I would gather.

Oh wipe your eyes, there is some good

This line is nicely understood,

This line is a little bit too bent

But shows a certain sentiment.

Dwight Tryon later remembered Brandegee’s wit.

“Tryon relates that one of their number, (the Jacquesson students) a newcomer, had a theory of his own about starting his drawing. He began it with and elaborate system of dots or points which took a good deal of time to place before he finally connected them by lines. Brandegee, who was something of a joker, took advantage of this person’s temporary absence from the room to change the position of one of the dots in the drawing, which entirely upset the scheme and obliged the unfortunate theorist to begin again.” (White, page 43-44)

Upon returning to the U.S. he opened a studio in New York. He started teaching at Miss Porter’s School for Girls in Farmington in 1880 but kept his New York studio for a time. In 1890 he moved to his beloved Farmington. He continued to teach at Miss Porter’s until 1903. In 1898 he married Susan Lord, the daughter of a Smith College Professor, who was an accomplished cellist and a member of the American String Quartet. (Brandegee himself was an amateur cellist.)

In 1892 with Frederic Edwin Church and others he founded the Society of Hartford Artists. He was also one of the founders, along with Charles Noel Flagg, of the Connecticut League of Art Students, where he taught many of the notable Hartford painters including James Britton, James Goodwin McManus, Carl Ringius, Thomas Brabazon, and Ralph R. Seymour.

His home was at 36 High Street in Farmington, which he named Chateau Ingres, where he is reported to have built a swimming pool in the shape of a cello, his wife’s instrument. His home was a center of artistic activity, not only for the students of Miss Porter’s School, but also his students from the Connecticut League in Hartford. James Britton remembered fondly their journeys from Hartford to Farmington on the trolley to paint in the local countryside and listen to music. Britton, writing in 1934 remembered:

January 6, 1934 ‘Twenty-five years ago in Farmington, at Robert Brandegee’s studio home – most delightful of artist homes, Brandegee wanted music and had it. Almost every Sunday afternoon for many years I was there to hear the trio playing of Mrs. Charles B (piano ) (his sister-in-law) their daughter Hildegarde (violin) and Mrs. Robert B (cello). Sometimes Bill Smith or McManus would go out from Hartford with me. Brandegee, then in his prime, would sit beaming in his white beard – his round figure in informal black clothes comfortable in an easy chair. Between the music sessions he would be apt to bring in a dish of cookies – and Mrs. B, resting her cello in a safe corner, would follow with a tray with glasses of grape juice (their customary liquor refreshment). No one of any acquaintance has ever taken the place of the Brandegees for home music giving.” (volume 7, page 116)

Britton and some of the other students at the League formed an orchestra. Britton remembers:

July 20, 1927 “We struggled with Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony one winter and worked over the orchestra part of the Haydn Cello Concerto which we played at the (?) with Mr. Robert Brandegee doing the solo part. The orchestra made a trip out to Brandegee’s house in Farmington and gave a concert there. I remember that Miss Hooker was in the company and Cora Klauser also and I seem to think that I walked home with Cora.

Brandegee was immense on this occasion passing around refreshments and being very witty. Great days. I seem to remember that some of the girls from Miss Porter’s school attended that concert. What a beautiful home life Brandegee had. I can’t remember that I directed the orchestra on that occasion. … I remember the Sundays when we used to go to Farmington to Brandegee’s where Bryant and McManus were rehearsing Brandegee’s play “Van Dyke and Franz Hals”. Brandegee was thrilled with the idea that anybody would put his play on and drama was finally given at the League.” (volume 7, page 116)

Brandegee attracted several of his fellow Connecticut artists to Farmington. Walter Griffin joined him in the creation of the “Farmington Magazine”, which was published for two years from 1900-1902. Charles Foster, who was undoubtedly drawn to Farmington by Brandegee, lived nearby in a studio in the rear of 42 Mountain Road. Montague and Charles Noel Flagg, William Gedney Bunce, and Allen Butler Talcott were often in Farmington painting and socializing with Brandegee. Griffin liked to refer to Farmington as the “Barbazon of America”.

His fondness for Farmington is clearly reflected in a short piece entitled “The Farmington Myth” which he wrote in 1906 as a preface to a book about the historic homes of the town.

“When the Lord made the world, he made Asia, Africa and Europe, and last of all he made North and South America. He made the Americas with special care, as that is the place where the nations of the world would finally come together. When the Lord was making New England, one of the little angels asked that he too might make a state, so the Lord let him make the state of Connecticut. As the little angels shaped the rivers and built up the mountains, his cheeks were red with excitement. But when the work was nearly finished there was a large hollow and the material was all gone. Then the little angel was overwhelmed with confusion. But the Lord took him kindly by the hand, and the Lord took from the folds of his mantel some of the stuff of which paradise is made and he fitted it into the hole and the place was Farmington.”

He was, in a sense, an artist’s artist. While he never actively promoted his art, he was widely respected by his colleagues. James Britton called him, “a great man and a great artist….he is one of the really solid and great figures in American art a painter always a painter….A great man Brandegee a great man B.” Britton frequently laments that Brandegee’s work is not well known to the public. Near the end of his life Britton wrote in his customary no nonsense manner, “….Brandegee was a great man, even if few know it. The brainless, soul-less brood of present day Americans are a hopeless set of Block heads. If they were not(,) Brandegee’s work would be propagated, held high, and literature would team with stories of him. Rob Brandegee – painter. A great man wasted on a thankless race.” Nelson C. White wrote for the 1971 New Britain Museum retrospective “As for Brandegee, I feel that he is one of our very finest artist, not only of Connecticut, but of the U.S.A. Your portrait (the portrait in he NBMAA) of ‘Miss Porter’ is a masterpiece, suggestive perhaps of Eakins but it has, as does the portrait of Montague Flagg (by Eakins) always reminded me of Titian’s ‘Man with a Glove’ in its remarkable simplicity and absence of irrelevant accessories which is so often the fault of second-rate portraits.” Dwight Tryon also thought highly of Brandegee and his work but lamented that he did not do more to promote himself.

Two long entries in Britton’s diaries provide a vivid picture of the man near the end of his life:

April 2, 1919 (Edited in 1932) “At 8 trolly (sic.) to Farmington to see R. Brandegee. As I approach the house in the dark gloomy street on the hill three flashes of lightning and three peals of thunder come suddenly out of the dark. Just as I step onto Brandegee’s porch the rain pelts down. House dark. I rap. Light springs upstairs. Mrs. B in robe comes to door. Offers me umbrellas, says they are all abed. I’m about ready to go still standing at the door on the porch when Mrs. B, rather reluctantly it seems, assures me she hears B. stirring upstairs. Surely enough, the great man appears at the head of the stairs and descends. I go in. He puts out his hand. I ask him if he’s well. – He sits down and tells me to draw up a chair after I tell him that nature set of a salute of three guns as I approached. B. laughs. (I can see that room now, with the old bearded man sitting in the lamp light, talking quietly, the most friendly human being I have ever known, a great artist who sought nothing much of credit for himself and everything for those he believed in. The room where we sat, a dining room with a large 0 table covered with an evening cloth taking up much of the centre of the room, had a stairway running up from it into the upper floor and the open kitchen door opposite two large windows which looked out upon the porch. The porch floor was almost level with the ground and the gravel path led to it shaded by a pergola with a thick hanging of grape vines. The porch was fairly large and square and the large wide front door with upper and lower section was placed at the northwest corner. I was very familiar with the place as I had been one of B’s most frequent callers during years before I was married. The porch was overhung by a large apple tree which shaded it during the day from the southward sun and at night threw a deep shadow over it. I shall never forget that visit on a rainy night, the heavy quiet of the village hill street, the velvety darkness of the sky with the black of approaching night storm in it. And the lightning flashes the claps of thunder. I think of the storm in Hayden’s “Seasons” so apropos in Brandegee’s vicinity, he revered the old music master and undoubtedly his sympathy with me was due partly to my willingness to play the piano while he played his cello in old old tunes by Hayden and Handel, Bach and Mozart.) Brandegee tells me he has had a bad accident – fell on cellar stairs and struck his head on the cement floor – was six days unconscious. Says he had a slight stroke sometime ago and he drags one foot as a consequence. B. is interested to hear about the new paper. Mrs. B. remains upstairs. B says Foster (Charles) is funny says to him ‘what a pity men like you have to die.’ B. smiles as he tells me this, and I say something about Foster delicacy in saying such a thing.” (volume 3, page 9)

October 16, 1920 “Off on early train to Hartford. Arrive at noon. See Dr. B and get 100 on account. Go out to Farmington to see Brandegee. Meet Seymour (Ralph Russell Seymur) at the bank and Bill McCullough on the street. At Farmington leave the car at Knotts Corners and walk through the woods. Most magnificent sight. (pen sketch of mountain in sun in the original diary) Arrive Brandegee’s front door again. Push it open and see Brandegee sitting huddled up in an overcoat over near the window of the big music room. He turns in the chair as I come in and says “Who’s that?” As I come forward he says “Oh its you Britton Im glad to see you. I cant see very well though, my eyes are most gone I can’t paint.” He tries to get up with his cane but I tell him not to. So I sit down near him and he tries to smile and sighs “Well”. He says that during the ride to Twin Lakes, where he has a summer place the sun shone in his eyes nearly all the way and he hasn’t been able to see very well since. Says his boy Rob bought an automobile and takes him out. Poor Brandegee. Here he is all alone in the big music room where his wife used to play so much. All alone now, the wife gone. He tells me that the other night he was lying in bed and he thought he saw a figure standing opposite him. He says it looked like Grace (Mrs. Brandegee’s sister) but finally he realized as he spoke and said “Why Grace?” that it was not Grace at all but his own dead wife. He says he thought some of burying Mrs. Brandegee’s cello with her but his son thought he had better not. He says the boy has proven good to him. Is at work in Hartford and every evening comes home and cooks the supper. “A young girl comes over every day to look us over and little Paul is boarding at a house nearby.” Poor Brandegee. All alone now most of the day in his old age. He stood up to go to the kitchen where I cooked some eggs for him and we ate a bit of supper together as we had often done in the old days. I think how often in winter days we had odd suppers in that snug little kitchen with his picture of a chef in cap and apron on the wall. When his wife was alive how bright Brandegee was and full of jokes and good cheer. A perfect friend. Now he’s alone in this sad sad house that used to be so full of life. As it grows dark he talks of his wife and cries a little and I try to assure him by reminding him of the fine home and the good care he gave her. He say (sic.)”I hope I did make her happy. I tried to . I told her I realized how much older I was than she, but she said that made no difference, that I had been kind to her.” Young Robert returns after dark and greets me very cordially. He’s now a great comfort to his father His poor feeble father. Just before the boy came and we were sitting by the open grate Brandegee tried to get up on his feet. He walked a step and started to fall. I tried to catch him but he slipped to the floor. I helped him up. He said he was not hurt, said his legs were week. I couldn’t leave him till the boy came and when I started to go I told him I’d bring some of the painters from New York to see him. He said “All right Britton, glad to see anyone who knows you.” Brandegee said that C Furyk (Constant Furyk) finished his portrait of him, rolled it up and said he would take it to Poland when he went back. B says Furyk has started to walk south with his family to spend the cold winter. Young Robert comes out to the door with me as I go just as his father used to do. But the father usually carried out a lighted lamp to light me through the dark path to the street.” (volume 6, page 18)

His wife died in June of 1920 and Brandegee died in Farmington on March 5th, 1922.

The New Britain Museum of American Art presented a retrospective of Brandgee’s work from March 18 to April 25, 1971.

Black Benton Fine Art , “Robert Bolling Brandegee”, Ask/ART, ,

Britton, James, “Diaries, in James Britton Papers”, Smithsonian Archives of American Art

The Farmington Historical Society, “Farmington, Connecticut, the Village of Beautiful Homes”, 1907

Farmington Historical Society website,

Ferguson, Charles B. “An Exhibition of the work of Robert Bolling Brandegee (1849-1922)”, French, H. W., “Art and Artists in Connecticut”, 1978, page 158

The Harford Courant, 3/7/22

Kornhauser, Elizabeth M. “American Paintings Before 1945 in the Wadsworth Atheneum”, 1996, page 129-131

Leach, Charles M. “Robert Bolling Brandegee, Farmington Artists and Their Times”, The New Britain Museum of American Art, March 18-April 25, 1971

Farmington Historical Society website,

White, Henry C., “The Life and Art of Dwight William Tryon”, 1930