Eric James Bransby

Eric Bransby was born October 25, 1916, in Auburn, New York, and was an active Missouri artist in the mid- to late 1900s. He was married to the artist Mary Ann Bransby and had a daughter named Fredericka. He attended and received his diploma at the Kansas City Art Institute in the 1940s and was a student of Thomas Hart Benton and Fletcher Martin. He also studied at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center under the direction of Boardman Robinson and Jean Charlot and received a bachelor's and master's degree at the Colorado College in Colorado Springs. He later went on to study and receive his master's in fine arts and teach at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

During his active years, Eric Bransby participated in several exhibitions, including the Midwestern Artists' Exhibition, hosted by the Kansas City Art Institute, in 1941; the Joslyn Art Museum in 1940 in Omaha, Nebraska; Oakland Art Museum of California in 1940; Oklahoma Art Center in 1945, among many others. He was a member of the National Society of Mural Painters. He held many teaching positions. In 1950-1952 he was an instructor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; he taught summer school at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, in 1956; and at the University of Missouri in Kansas City.

Eric Bransby was a modernist figure painter and illustrator and was well known for his murals. In 1981 he won a six-state competition to design and execute a ten-panel mural dedicated for the council chambers of the Liberty, Missouri, city hall. His work is also displayed in other locations across the United States: the McAfee Memorial Library at Park University, Parkville, Missouri; Pioneers Museum, Colorado College, and a medical center in Colorado Springs, Colorado; Oklahoma Art Center in Oklahoma; Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, where he developed the practice of creating individual movable panels, to name a few.

Eric Bransby was awarded the Veatch Award for Distinguished Research and Creative Activity in 1977 from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The University of Colorado honored him with a doctorate of humane letters in 1997; in 1998 the Colorado College Alumni Association honored him with a medal for lifetime achievement. Eric Bransby died in Colorado Springs on September 23, 2020.