Emile Pierre Branchard was born in 1881 of French parents on MacDougal Street, in Greenwich Village, New York City. As a child, he moved to a boarding house on Washington Square kept by his mother. This establishment was frequented by artists and writers and became known as the “house of genius.” He was schooled by French nuns, and his earliest contact with art was to watch his stepfather (a former student of Messionier) paint. Branchard worked as a stevedore and truck driver for many years. During World War I he worked as a policeman on the Home Defense Fund. Exposed to all kinds of weather while working on the docks, he contracted tuberculosis and was forced to retire. Denied manual labor and unwilling to pass his time reading, Branchard began to paint with left-over colors and brushes of a former artist-roomer in the house. After helping with the chores of the house he would return to his studio basement to paint his nudes “a la burlesque,” his landscapes from memory of a boyhood spent in Connecticut, and his imaginary still lifes.
A roomer, who saw Emile frequently at work in the basement, placed several of his canvases in the “Society of Independent Artists Exhibition” of 1919. His work was seen there by Stephen Bourgeois who gave the painter a one-man show in the same year and for the last time in 1932. His work was shown at the Marie Harriman Gallery in 1938 and was included that same year in the Museum of Modern Art’s “Masters of Popular Painting” show. In 1938, Branchard died in the same house in which he had lived for fifty years.
Emile Branchard (1881-1938)
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