Paul and his wife Grace came to Canada Lake for the first time in 1908. They were attracted here through their friendship with Betsy and Clare Victor Dwiggins. The Bransoms rented the Granger camp next door to the Dwiggins camp, long known at the "Dwigwam" on Canada Lake's south shore near Sand Point.The photos above were taken during this 1908 visit. Grace is shown seated in the bow of a rowboat very similar to Bransom's boat in the museum's collection.
In 1917 the Bransoms bought two lots at $200 per lot and built their own camp on Canada Lake's north shore. Paul and Grace would move to the lake in early May and stay until after Election Day so that they could cast their votes. They considered Canada Lake to be their legal residence. The camp's great room with its large north window served both as a living room and studio.
Canada Lake of the 1920s and 30s was a veritable "Art Colony." Clare Victor Dwiggins (1874-1958) was the first artist to be attracted. Known as "Dwig", Dwiggins was a nationally known cartoonist producing comic strips and single-panel cartoons for a number of newspapers. His best known strip was School Days which began as a single panel in 1909 and continued as a Sunday strip until the early 1930s. Dwig became a summer resident of the Lake in 1907 when he built the Dwigwam. A few years later he attracted to the Lake Charles Sarka (1879-1960), a successful watercolorist and illustrator, who built a camp on a lot on the north shore not far from where Paul Bransom would build his camp. Dwig would also invite his friend James Thurber for extended visits to Canada Lake. Members of the group were not just visual artists. James Stanley, a bass baritone and Victor Red Seal artist, acquired property along the South Shore Trail in 1933. Jim's wife, Nell, was a pianist and was Jim's accompanist on concert tours. There was also John Lowell Russell, who headed an early movie company, Blazed Trail Productions. His wife Lu wrote scripts and novels. She was a cameraman and their daughter Evangeline acted. The Russells owned a camp on the South Shore. There were also writers. Margaret Widdemer (1887-1978), the Bransoms' neighbor, won the first Pullitzer Prize for Poetry in 1919. Herbert Asbury (1891-1963), a New York City reporter and writer best known for his Gangs of New York, owned a camp on Dolgeville Point. Dwig's son-in-law Willis Todhunter Ballard (1903-1980) was a writer of "dime store" novels. For more on the "Art Colony", see chapter 8 of Barbara McMartin's Caroga: An Adirondack Town Recalls Its Past and an essay by John Widdemer on the Canada Lakes Conservation Association's website.
In his President's message for the Society of Animal Artists in 1965, Paul Bransom would write:
The old saying 'Artists are born, not made' applies especially in the case of the true animal artist --with him (or her), picturing animals is not a decision --it is a compulsion which is the dominant force of the artist's entire life and endeavor.
Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Paul was attracted not to the museums but the National Zoo. While at the end of the nineteenth century art students would be trained studying and copying casts of Classical statues or the works in museums like the Corcoran, Paul would devote his attention to drawing the animals at the Zoo. He would write, "I have never attended art school save for about a month at the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington. The National Zoo seemed to be ever so much more important." When he moved to New York City, he was given permission by William Hornaday, the director of the New York Zoo, to have a studio in the Lion House. At the core of Bransom's work is the attention to animals as animated beings not as static objects like taxidermy. In an appreciation of Bransom's work, Dorothy Lathrop would write:
If he is to draw an animal hidden among the roots of a tree, he himself first feels the snugness of that retreat, the pressure of the roots curving protectingly around him. He feels the fear of the rabbit as it presses itself close to the concealing brown leaves as the fox passes by. He becomes the creatures, but never under his fingers do they become man. Their emotions, reactions, movements are all those of animals. This artist has too much respect for creatures, is too keenly interested in them as such, to humanize them by so much as one un-animal-like quirk of a line...But what is even more important than any individual drawing is the feeling one gets from them all of deep woods, their mystery and silence, and of the creatures living there; the perception he gives us of this world of animals from which by his treachery man has shut himself out. It is Paul Bransom's whole attitude toward animals that is important; his championship of them.
In 1962 Bransom wrote a chapter on drawing animals for the National Institute of Art and Design. He includes in it the following study of canines:
He captures in this drawing the diversity of temperaments between the different canines. He wrote: "There is a strong resemblance among domestic and wild dogs, in spite of proportional variations in size of ears, length of nose, shape of eyes. However, we must consider the great difference in temperament. Through centuries of association with man, domestic dogs have developed a trusting benevolent attitude toward life. The wolf, coyote, fox and jackal, on the other hand, are hostile, crafty and suspicious because they have had to meet the harsh realities of a hostile world. The animal artist must express these differences through subtle exaggerations of certain features and attitudes...."
The Museum's drawing of a wolf pack is characteristic of the art of Paul Bransom. He knew the animal well enough to capture the wariness and alertness of the wolves in a wide variety of poses, all distinctly wolf-like. Despite the diversity of poses, Bransom captures the solidarity of the pack. Each wolf is a distinct creature at the same time a member of the pack. The drawing is also a testament to his mastery of his preferred medium of charcoal drawing. He captures the texture of the fur and through his subtle treatment of light and shadow articulates the contours of the hill at the same time sets the scene against the dramatic dark background.
The drawing is also a good example of Bransom's skills as a narrator. The sled tracks imply a human presence. This creates a tension between hunter and hunted. Whereas most wild life artists take the point of view of the hunter, Bransom will take the point of view of the animal. As Lathrop observed in the quotation above, "He becomes the creature." This is evident in a pastel entitled Spectator Fox. Bransom shows the fox slyly observing a passing hunter and his dog. The title of the pastel makes clear that the fox is the active observer and the human is the object of observation. In the Museum's drawing, this is brought out by dramatic stare of the lead wolf that is at the center of the piece. We are caught in an intense stare down. Who is the prey?
In this barren, inhospitable landscape of the Great North, we are clearly the intruders. It is the wolf who is the apex predator of this realm.
As Dorothy Lathrop made clear, Bransom was not just interested in representing the animal, but also paid attention to the animal's habitat. 
For example, an image of a Red Fox that Bransom made for Seagram's Sportsman Calendar in 1963 captures the woods at Canada Lake that would greet Paul and Grace when they arrived in May. 
The blossoming hobblebush and the sprouting fiddlehead ferns are unmistakable signs of the season. While at the Lake he did studies of the environment. His sketchbooks contain studies of the plants and trees. An example of this is his study of fiddlehead ferns. The moss covered boulder and dark woods are easily identifiable by any resident of the lake.
Paul Bransom was an accomplished watercolorist, although he never exhibited professionally as a watercolorist. He used watercolors in combination with charcoal for many of his illustrations like this 1925 illustration entitled Silent Hour from Allen Chaffee's Brownie: The Engineer of Beaver Brook. This night image with its grove of hemlocks is based on his experience of the woods of Canada Lake. The craggy roots and soft ground of hemlock needles are characteristic of hemlock groves.
The watercolors he did create were largely studies. The museum is fortunate to have in its collection one of these watercolor studies entitled Woods out the Back Door. Bransom here is exploring the light of the mixed woods with light greens of the filtered light through the deciduous trees on the left and the dark greens of the shade of the hemlock trees on the right. He also captures the recession into space of the tree trunks. It is interesting to compare Bransom's watercolors to his friend and neighbor Charles Sarka, a nationally recognized watercolorist. Sarka produced a large number of grand views of Canada Lake capturing the vista of the mountains and lake. 
In contrast, there are very few views of the Lake done by Bransom. One of the rare examples is a simple color pencil sketch of the view from his dock looking east at sunset. This drawing is more about the light at sunset than the topography of the lake. His watercolor studies are views of boulders, moss covered fallen trees, woodland water falls, and deep woods, all the habitat of his animals.
Paul Bransom was fortunate to come of age during what has been called the Golden Age of American Illustration. Advances in color printing and improvements in the postal system were important factors in the creation of a wide range of popular magazines. There was an audience for high quality illustrations. Artists like N. C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, and later Norman Rockwell gained wide popularity. Readers would look forward each week to the arrival of magazines like the Saturday Evening Post to see what was the cover illustration. The work of Paul Bransom was sought after for magazine covers. Between 1907 and 1942 Paul produced at least sixteen covers for the Saturday Evening Post and at least thirty-nine covers for the Country Gentleman, also a product of the Curtis Publishing Company. In this era before television, there was a well-educated middle class audience for illustrated short stories. Paul Bransom was regularly called upon to illustrate magazine stories.
Bransom was also fortunate to begin his career in a period that saw the creation of a new genre of literature, what has been called the "realistic wild animal story." These were not stories of animals acting as one writer put it like humans in furry or feathery coats. As articulated by Charles G.D. Roberts, one of the creators of the genre, in these stories "the interest centres about the personality, individuality, mentality, of an animal, as well as its purely physical characteristics." The intention was to tell the story from the perspective of the animal. Bransom was well suited to illustrate these stories. He would acknowledge: "I’ve been unusually fortunate in being associated with authors of great distinction and ability. Certainly such writers as Jack London, Charles G.D. Roberts, Kenneth Grahame, A. P. Terhune, Oliver Curwood, Emma Lindsay-Squier, Olaf Baker, H. R. Newell, Enos Mills, etc., --should afford sufficient inspiration for anyone." In 1907, Bransom would publish his first illustrations for the work Charles G.D. Roberts, and between then and 1921 he would illustrate at least 85 Roberts stories in Cosmopolitan and Windsor magazines. Many of these stories would be republished in anthologies of Roberts' writings.
