Ross Eugene Braught

Ross Eugene Braught, born in 1898 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was a painter and lithographer whose style expanded from Art Nouveau-inspired landscapes to more realist compositions. Braught began his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1921 he was able to travel to England and Italy, having been awarded the prestigious Emlen Cresson Memorial Traveling Scholarship. His travels would inform his subject matter throughout his painting career.

In 1923, Ross Braught married Eugenia Osenton; they lived in Delaware until 1928.  Braught exhibited regularly during this time at galleries such as the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Dudensing Galleries in New York, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He became a member of the Woodstock Art Colony in 1928 after moving to Woodstock, New York. 

From 1931-1935, Ross Braught was the head of the Painting Department at the Kansas City Art Institute. He taught life painting, landscape painting, drawing and portraiture. The helm of the Painting Department was taken over by Thomas Hart Benton in 1936, who moved to Missouri from New York. Just as Braught was leaving the Art Institute, he published an illustrated book, Phaethon, in 1935.  Braught also worked with Alexander Bailey on a mural in the lobby of the Music Hall, part of the Municipal Auditorium of Kansas City, Missouri. The title of the twenty-seven foot tall mural is Mnemosyne and the Four Muses.

Travel influenced Braught’s work, and he spent time during his summer months in the Dakota Badlands, the Grand Canyon and Colorado. He was said to have organized a painting trip with Kansas City Art Institute students in 1933 to the Grand Canyon. After his first stint working at the Art Institute, he spent time living on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. He taught at Cornell University for three years and was known to make trips to Dutch Guiana (Suriname) and Puerto Rico, painting a mural at Fort Buchanan in Puerto Rico.

Braught returned to instruct at the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design sometime between 1946-1948.  He taught there until 1962, then moved to Philadelphia. Very little is known of his life from that point until his death in 1983.