painter, printmaker, teacher and critic, was born in Melbourne. She studied at the National Gallery School under William Dargie, Alan Sumner and Murray Griffin in 1945-49, winning prizes for drawing and still-life painting. Sumner sent some of his students, one of them Braund, to the George Bell School for extra study, which proved a major influence. While still students at the NGV Braund and Judy Hunter had modernist works accepted by the Contemporary Art Society (Vic.) for exhibition (c.1943). They were threatened with expulsion from the CAS because they were reported in Truth as saying they had entered the works for a lark. Braund apologised and continued in the CAS, but Hunter employed lawyers, refused to apologise to John Reed and did not exhibit again with the CAS (Furby, p.91).
After finishing classes with Bell in 1949, Braund studied in England (1950-51). She rejoined the Contemporary Art Society in 1952 and in 1954 became a regular 'Thursday night’ participant at the George Bell studio until Bell’s death in 1966. Bell appreciated her ability to use form, colour and surface to create good pictorial design, and Braund became a confident exponent of Bell’s teaching ideas. She taught art at three Melbourne schools in the 1950s, gave talks on ABC radio in 1961-64, and reviewed children’s books for the Australian in 1969-77.
Instead of feeling victimised by being a woman artist, Braund stated in 1979 that she was glad that 'the collectors aren’t interested because it means that people buy my paintings because they like them, not because they are good investments’. She works in oil, gouache or watercolour, her later work being more angular in the treatment of figures and more abstract during the mid-1960s. Two excellent gouaches, The Art Class 1960 and Bathers, Sandringham 1979, were auctioned at Christie’s Sydney on 14-15 August 1994, lots 186, 194E.
In 1992 Christopher Heathcote noted that many artists who came to maturity in the 1950s have been 'unjustly neglected’ and that Braund was no exception. She held her first solo exhibition in 1952 and has exhibited consistently ever since. Her work is held in many collections: the National Galleries of Australia and Victoria, the Queensland Art Gallery and regional and university galleries. She has travelled extensively: to England and Europe in 1950-51, to Greece in 1958, as well as visiting the Mediterranean, India and Asia.
- Writers:
- Mahoney, Bronwyn
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 1992
