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Margaret Bell Bruton (1894-1983)
 Margaret Bell Bruton was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 20, 1894. The Brutons had settled in the San Francisco Bay area in 1879, but Margaret was born in New York where her mother had returned for the birth of her first child. Margaret attended public schools in Alameda with her younger sisters, Helen and Esther, who also were later become artists.
In 1913 she began studies at the San Francisco Institute of Art under Frank Van Sloun. A scholarship from that school later allowed for four years of further study at the Art Student's League in New York City under Frank Vincent DuMond and Robert Henri. After returning to California, she worked for two years at Letterman Hospital in San Francisco, until the conclusion of World War I. She then began studying with Armin Hansen in Monterey, and in 1924 the entire Bruton family relocated there. The Bruton sisters traveled to Europe in 1925, visiting galleries in England, France and Italy, after which Margaret remained in Paris for study at Academie de la Grande Chaumiere.
Upon her return to California, Margaret gave her first solo exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery in 1926. She traveled to New Mexico in 1929 to live among the Pueblo Indians, to Nevada in 1933 to sketch the old ghost towns, as well as to Palm Springs, California in 1936. Essentially an oil painter, her portraits, figures, and genre won many prizes and medals from the early 1920s in Northern California shows. By 1938 Margaret turned to mosaics, and she, in collaboration with Helen and Esther, produced a 57 x 144-inch mural called "The Peacemakers" in the Court of Pacifica for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition. Margaret was active in the art circles of San Francisco and Monterey until her death there on August 29, 1983.
Exhibited: The San Francisco Art Association annuals; California Society of Etchers; Santa Cruz Art League, 1925 (1st prize); San Francisco Women Artists from 1926; Galerie Beaux Arts, San Francisco, 1927 (solo); California-Pacific International Exposition, San Diego, 1935; Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, 1939.
Works Held: California Historical Society; Standard Federal Savings, Los Angeles (mural).
--Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"; Phil and Marion Kovinick, "Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West"; Patricia Trenton, "Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945"; askart.com
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