Biography from the Archives of askART

Paul Bransom (1885-1979)

An animal and wildlife illustrator and painter, Paul Bransom was born in Washington D.C. and began drawing animals from early childhood. He left school at age thirteen and became an apprentice-draftsman assisting with mechanical drawings for patents. He also spent much of his free time at the Washington Zoo sketching the animals, carefully observing their unique characteristics.

He later went to New York and took a job with the "New York Evening Journal" doing a comic strip called 'The Latest News from Bugville.' He later said that illustrators Walt Kuhn and T.S. Sullivant, who did animal cartoons, and Charles Livingston Bull had the major influence on his work.

In New York, he spent so much time at the Bronx Zoo that he set up a studio in the Lion House, and his goal was to do animal illustrations for magazines. His portfolio so impressed the editor of "The Saturday Evening Post" that they began using his work.

Bransom had a long, distinguished career, illustrating nearly fifty books on wildlife subjects including "Call of the Wild" by Jack London and hundreds of magazine stories. He also did fine-art paintings and taught summer classes in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

He was a member of the Society of Illustrators, the Watercolor Society, and the Society of Animal Artists. He lived at Green Lake in Fulton County, New York.