1907 – 1997

A painter, photographer, and designer at Vogue magazine, Braguin exemplifies the twentieth century European emigre who moved to small towns and rural areas of Connecticut, helping to revitalize communities that were losing population.

Biography/Description of Work

Born in the Ukraine in 1907, Braguin came with his family to the United States as a teenager. He studied with Boardman Robinson at the Art Students League in New York City, and was befriended by artist William Glackens. His early success was as a furniture and fabric designer, and later as a photographer. Braguin served in Italy, Austria, and Yugoslavia in World War II and was particularly proud of his work as a photographer with the Office of Strategic Services. In the 1950s he returned to painting “starting at the beginning’’ he said and had his first one-man show in 1971 at the Poindexter Gallery in New York. Since then his paintings and wire sculptures, most notably his “Essex Harbor Series’’ and “Main Street Series’’ have been shown at numerous museums and galleries in New York and Connecticut, including the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the 20th Century Foundation Museum. Braguin and his wife Janet Chatfield-Taylor (1908-1983), a fashion editor at Vogue magazine, were keen members of the New York art world until the 1960s, when they moved permanently to Essex. He became a concerned citizen of the town founding the Tri Town Youth Services and co-founding the North Main Street Association.

Sources view

Obituary, Hartford Courant, 11/15/1997.
Interview with Eve Potts, 5/28/2014, in Essex.
Falk, Peter. Who Was Who in American Art, 1999.
HRI from LHD Study Report 1993. ×

Associated Resource(s)

• 61 North Main Street, Essex