1878 – 1966

Biography/Description of Work

Along with her painter husband Daniel Putnam Brinley, Gordon Brinley was a member of the Silvermine Guild of Artists from its beginnings in 1922 at least into the 1940s. They had come to Silvermine from Greenwich in the summer of 1909 at the suggestion of Charles Caffin, the well-known art critic, and his wife, with whom they shared the rent on a cottage. Gordon Brinley exhibited along with her husband in the 2nd Silvermine Group of Artists (‘Knockers’) exhibition that summer. Her entry was an embroidered tapestry. Professionally she was an author and dramatic recitalist. Born in Brooklyn, NY, she was educated in private schools in the U.S., including the Low-Heywood School in Stamford, CT, and at Columbia University, then spent 4 years in Paris. She contracted with professional management in about 1920 to give dramatic presentations of the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, using the pen name Gordon Brinley. These presentations were popular and she made them in costume in theaters, colleges, clubs, and schools in the U.S., Canada, and England. She wrote poetry herself and is represented in a published anthology of CT poets. She received a fiction prize from the National League of American Pen Women in 1936 and was president of the CT branch from 1935-37. She also belonged to the Authors League of America, National Arts Club, and the New Canaan Garden Club. She began a series of travel books in 1934 about Quebec, Cape Breton, the Gaspe, and the Canadian Rockies, which her husband illustrated. The Brinleys soon became permanent residents of the Silvermine area of New Canaan. In 1915 they built a Tudor-style Kentish cottage there.

Associated Resource(s)

n/a