Colleen Browning (1918–2003)

Colleen Browning was born on a military base at Shoeburyness, England, the daughter of Maj.-Gen. Langley Browning and his wife Violet Cairnes. Colleen showed early promise as an artist and her parents encouraged her, enrolling her in the Farnham School of Arts in 1933. The following year, she exhibited her work at the Women in Arts Society in London and attended the Salisbury School of Arts and Craft. She won a full scholarship to the Slade School of Art in London, which she attended from 1937 to 1939, graduating with honors. During World War II, she worked as a mapmaker for the Royal Air Force. She went on to work as a movie set designer for the J. Arthur Rank Film Corporation. In 1948, she met Geoffrey Wagner, an English literature professor and writer, on vacation on the island of Ischia. A few months later, they moved together to the USA, settled in New York City, married, and had three children. Colleen made the transition from theatrical work to easel painter and her career took off. She aroused the attention and admiration of fellow artists and became a major figure in the Realism movement. In 1952, she exhibited her paintings at the Whitney Museum of American Art and in 1953 she held a solo exhibition at the Hewitt Gallery. Colleen created works in the style of magic realism that increasingly blurred the lines between the real and the imaginary. She also taught art as a professor at the Pratt Institute, City College of New York, and the National Academy of Design, and as the author of several books. Her paintings were exhibited in the National Academy of Design's annual exhibitions and at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Kennedy Galleries. She also did commercial illustrations, including for children's books, and printmaking. Her work was reproduced in numerous publications, including Time, The New York Times, Newsweek,
Glamour, and American Artist. Her fully-illustrated guide to oil painting called Working Out a Painting, was published in 1988.