Her early works capture the essence of the Arts and Crafts movement. An article in the Studio Magazine in 1902, describes a fireplace and writing cabinet made from  “simple materials”  and decorated with “tile work, window glass and metal-work fittings…”.  

A later article, written shortly before winning a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in 1904, describes how "Miss Brunton... means to make sculpture her life’s work… a plaster study from life, which gained her a silver medal, has been acquired by the British Government to represent English art at the St. Louis Exhibition.”

South Kensington & ROdin

Both he [Rodin] and M. Thaulow [Fritz Thaulow] distinguished a young girl sculptor, Miss Violet Brunton, by special praise of her modelling - an appreciation which does not easily fall to the lot of many artists."

26th March 1904.

Female Sculptors

Despite clear ambitions and undoubted talent, not a single example of Brunton’s sculpture can be found online. Those recorded in artistic journals date from her time as a student.  Possibly suggesting that the facilities open to her, in Liverpool and later South Kensington, as well as the assistance of fellow students and teachers, gave her a short window in which she could be an sculptor, free from the financial concerns of making a living.  

Sculpting requires spacious studios, expensive equipment and materials. It is therefore a difficult vocation to sustain and though leading figures could afford to crystalise their ideas in bronze and marble, lesser-known talents often had little choice but to work in plaster or clay.  

Such creations were just as less labour intensive, but less durable and less coveted, and where lucrative commissions can allow a sculptor to outsource the arduous stages to their assistants, a lack of commissions can condemn them to oversee every step of the process.

As artistic renown generally depends on bodies of work, large enough to be widely seen and appreciated, forming a workshop is an essential step in artists looking to expand. For a female artist to surround herself with assistants, invariably male, represented an often impossible departure from historical convention.

It is perhaps for these reasons that Brunton favoured a more reliable niche in the graphic arts. 

Sculpting and illustration are the polar opposites of the artistic spectrum: sculpture seeks a lasting physical outlet, whilst illustrations are functional in character and often confined to passing publications. Brunton’s need to produce them resembles the Faustian bargain so often encountered by artists, whose wishes for posterity are belied by the practical concerns of everyday life.

Severe inflation following the First World War, might explain why she turned to miniature painting in the 1920s. A handful of works signed with a male pseudonym may allude to other less tangible obstacles.