Painter, artist in embroidery and fabric collage, daughter of the artist Clive Branson, and the social campaigner and historian of the British Communist Party Noreen Branson, she married and divorced the painter Alan Hopkins, who was diagnosed a schizophrenic. She had four years at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and one at the Slade School of Fine Art, but regarded herself “as a classical painter”. Dissatisfied with her art school training Branson came to spend six years in the National Gallery, copying and learning the techniques of the Renaissance. Her early work stemmed from painstaking sketches of London scenes, such as cafés; there was a period of embroidery pictures and fabric collages; many years painting still life, portraits and landscapes; then after the death of her second husband Branson, although an athiest, painted a long series of heavenly scenes and Red Cross panoramas in which friends and neighbours were used as models.