Edward B. Bruce

Law and business filled the earlier decades of the career of Edward Bright Bruce. He practiced law first in New York City and later in Manila, P.I. There, too, he became part owner of The Manila Times. Leaving the Philippines, he operated a development company with interests in China, the South Sea Islands and French Indo-China. Eventually Bruce went to Washington, D.C., as a lobbyist for the Philippine Independence Bill and was projected further into public life in 1933 when he attended the London Economic Conference as an expert on silver for the American delegation.

He began painting at the age of fourteen, worked at it through all his busy years, and when asked by an interviewer, after he had gained his reputation as an artist, how he came to paint, answered with the statement, “I felt that I had something to express and anyway I couldn’t help myself.” He was elected to the Century not as an artist member but as President of the Pacific Development Co. There were no artists among his sponsors. His paintings for the most part were landscapes, as the exhibition of his work in the Club gallery in December 1934 recorded. His life in the East and his love for Chinese painting combined with his study of Italian art during his sojourn in Italy gave to his work both a sense of beauty and a soundness of technique.

Ten years before he died, he became the chief of the Section of Fine Arts of the Treasury Department in charge of the Federal Art Projects. Because of his wide experience in business and art he was the ideal man for the place and under his leadership it became a gigantic undertaking in the interest of American art. To this vast scheme for the advancement of art he brought all his political power and lined up congressmen, senators and even the President of the United States [Franklin D. Roosevelt] to help him carry out his ideal.

In his Washington office there was a large map of the United States such as a general would use in a campaign, with colored pins to mark the battlegrounds. Bruce used those pins to locate the cities and towns where the Federal Art Projects were going on. This was a real battle for Bruce: a battle of art against ignorance and indifference. It pushed its lines into the Far West and Northwest and into the Deep South and as these lines fanned out they uncovered much real talent in obscure places and likewise much barren ground. However, it was all very much worth-while and Bruce fought to the bitter end with a great heart.

He was a man of medium height and a massive figure with the large round head of a mathematician set on powerful shoulders, all giving an impression of great strength. His study of law, his business experiences, his love of beauty served him to a remarkable degree, when he finally chose to become an advocate for the American artist.

Geoffrey Parsons
1943 Century Memorials