Paul Bransom

Who was Paul Bransom?

Paul Bransom was a U.S. illustrator of animals, a painter, and a cartoonist.

Born in Washington, D.C., as a child Bransom started sketching animals he saw in his backyard and at the National Zoo. He began his career as a technical draftsman for the U.S. Patent Office when he was 13 years old. In 1903 he moved to New York City where he worked for the New York Evening Journal as a comic strip artist. After moving to New York, his talent as a wildlife artist was recognized while creating studies of the animals at the Bronx Zoo. His earliest commissions were covers for the Saturday Evening Post and illustrations for editions of Kipling's Just So Stories and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. He was awarded the Benjamin West Clinedinst Memorial Medal, and his works are included in the collection of the National Museum of American Illustration at Newport, Rhode Island.

Bransom's published works include:

Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling

An Argosy of Fables, ed. by Frederic Taber Cooper

The Wild Heart, by Emma-Lindsay Squier

The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame