Elizabeth York Brunton: the story so far

 

Nowadays, the internet is awash with all sorts of misleading information and misassumption that does lesser-known artists no justice. So far as Elizabeth  York Brunton goes, I will admit I am to blame for  not challenging this automated tosh and putting the record straight. Happily, the opportunity to make amends has arisen because a small group of colour woodcuts by Brunton has turned up in Glasgow, including Drei Zinnen (above) and the pair of birds (below) and these thrown new light on her career. Not all that much light, it has to be said, but enough of it to make a difference.

Brunton was born at Musselburgh in Scotland in 1880. She was the daughter of William Neilson Brunton and his second wife Louisa. At the time, Brunson was a building surveyor but went on to run a wire manufacturing business in Musselburgh. Typical of the age, the family was large and in 1910 Brunton decided to make provisions for his three unmarried daughters who  at the time were living together at 15, Regent Terrace, Edinburgh. 

It is likely she was a student on the teacher training course at Edinburgh College of Art by then. In common with almost all government schools of art, Edinburgh provided no training in fine art (and I don't know why Glasgow was an exception). No one knows whether or not she was introduced to colour woodcut there. Mabel Royds had trained as a teacher at Chester and was on the staff at Edinburgh before she left for India in 1914. All we can say is Brunton's colour woodcuts are in the Japanese manner adopted by many Scottish and English artists of the period and make use a full keyblock and inks applied with a brush. This is apparent in the sky and the brown rocks of Drei Zinnen and is no different from what Ethel Kirkpatrick or Mabel Royds were doing. 

But in many other respects, Brunton was different. Her principal training took place under the animal sculptor Edouard Nevallier at his studio in the southern suburbs of Paris and for many years Brunton used a flat on the Boulevard de Montparnasse. The difficulty is I know of only one surviving sculpture. This is a bronze bust of her father belonging to the museum at Musselburgh and although at least one other statue was exhibited at in the bust is all we have to go one at present. At one time, there was a little photo of it online but even that has disappeared so I must rely on my agent in Scotland to make further enquiries because I know my own got nowhere.

It goes without saying that over a career of at least thirty years, there were changes of subject and style, though animals and birds are constant throughout. The fact is so little is available, I can only note the influence of Scottish faux naif early on and Ohara Koson and art deco in the 1920s and assume many of her bird subjects were found in the Jardin des Plantes.

Considering I have a reliable list of twenty-two colour woodcuts by York Brunton, the group of twelve prints I know of in public collections and the four or five currently online is as discouraging as it is enigmatic. She exhibited widely and must have sold her work, so where is it all? Very little turns up, even in Scotland. The gateway was for sale in Scotland some years ago but was too uninteresting to buy and the top three prints illustrated here are coming up for auction at Great Western Auctions, Glasgow, on 13th June, 2026.

The check list draws on the research of a reader in Scotland and Alan Guest's unpublished list of prints. Alan made use of catalogues of the Graver Printers in Colour and the Colour Woodcut Society as well as the small collection held by  the British Museum. In addition, my reader made use of catalogues of the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Glasgow Institute.

I have assumed there are only two prints of Drei Zinnen.

The pig market, Montreuil 1911

The treadmill 1911

The pergola 1922 (Hoover Museum of Art, Cornell University)

The watchtower 1924

Les cochers 1924

Old gateway 1925

On the Dee, Kirkcudbright 1925

Drei Zinnen from Landro 1925

Sellagruppe 1926

Calendar with owls 1926 (Author's collection)

Tofana 1926

Demoiselle cranes 1927

Aigrettes 1928

Penguins 1928

Pedwell, Norham on Tweed 1928

Summer 1928

Chamaeleon 1928

(St Roch) Rhone 1929

Bullfinches 1935

Donkeys 1936

Monte Cristallo

Drei Zinnen from Lake Misurina