In 1881 this artist entered the Ursuline Convent at Piacenza, where she continues to paint religious pictures.

BRACKEN, JULIA M. First prize for sculpture, Chicago, 1898; appointed on staff of sculptors for the St. Louis Exposition.  Member of Arts Club, Western Society of Artists, Municipal Art League, and Krayle Workshop, Chicago.  Born at Apple River, Ill., 1871.  Pupil of Chicago Art Institute.  Acted as assistant to Lorado Taft, 1887-92.  Was much occupied with the decorations for the Columbian Exposition, and executed on an independent commission the statue of “Illinois Welcoming the Nations.”  There are to be five portrait statues placed in front of the Educational Building at St. Louis, each to be executed by a well-known artist.  One of these is to be the work of Miss Bracken, who is the only woman among them.  Miss Bracken has modelled an heroic portrait statue of President Monroe; beside the figure is a globe, on which he points out the junction of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

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BRACQUEMOND, MME. MARIE. Pupil of Ingres.  A portrait painter, also painter of genre subjects.  At the Salon of 1875 she exhibited “The Reading”; in 1874 “Marguerite.”  She has been much occupied in the decoration of the Haviland faience, a branch of these works, at Auteuil, being at one time in charge of her husband, Felix Bracquemond.  In 1872 M. Bracquemond was esteemed the first ceramic artist in France.  An eminent French critic said of M. and Mme. Bracquemond:  “You cannot praise too highly these two artists, who are as agreeable and as clever as they are talented and esteemed.”

Mme. Bracquemond had the faculty of employing the faience colors so well that she produced a clearness and richness not attained by other artists.  The progress made in the Haviland faience in the seventies was very largely due to Mme. Bracquemond, whose pieces were almost always sold from the atelier before being fired, so great was her success.

BRANDEIS, ANTOINETTA. Many prizes at the Academy of Venice.  Born of Bohemian parents in Miscova, Galitza, 1849.  Pupil of Iavurek, of Prague, in the beginning of her studies, but her father dying and her mother marrying again, she was taken to Venice, where she studied in the Academy several years under Grigoletti, Moja, Bresolin, Nani, and Molmenti.  Although all her artistic training was received in Italy and she made her first successes there, most of her works have been exhibited in London, under the impression that she was better understood in England.

Annoyed by the commendation of her pictures “as the work of a woman,” she signed a number of her canvases Antonio Brandeis.  Although she painted religious subjects for churches, her special predilection is for views of Venice, preferably those in which the gondola appears.  She has studied these in their every detail.  “Il canale Traghetto de’ San Geremia” is in the Museum Rivoltella at Trieste.  This and “Il canale dell’ Abbazia della Misericordia” have been much commended by foreign critics, especially the English and Austrians.  Other Venetian pictures are “La Chiese della Salute,” “Il canale de’ Canalregio,” and “La Pescaria.”