Brenda Pye (29 November 1907 – 26 April 2005), also known as Brenda Landon or Brenda Capron, was an English portrait painter and landscape artist. She exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Paris Salon, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Royal Society of British Artists and the Association of Women Artists; she was also a member of the Association of Sussex Artists. Early life She was born on 29 November 1907, and died in London at the age of 97 on 26 April 2005. She was the youngest child of a barrister called Walter Capron who was himself the youngest son of a landed gentry family seated at Southwick Hall in Northamptonshire. Her mother’s maiden name was Whistler, and through her she was a distant cousin of the English artist Rex Whistler and his brother the glass engraver Sir Laurence Whistler; she was also more distantly related to the Anglo-American artist James McNeill Whistler. Her earliest years were spent at her birthplace: Shortwood House, Litton, in Somerset, to which her father had retired from his London practice. A three-quarter length portrait of her in the gardens of Shortwood House in the summer of 1914, was painted by Henry Strachey, at that time the art critic of the Spectator, who lived nearby. However, from 1916 until her death, she lived in London and Sussex. Education She was educated privately and at Eastbourne Ladies College, Sussex, before taking up a scholarship to study at Eastbourne College of Art. A review of the College's annual exhibition in The Times on 24 June 1925 (p 8 column F) singled out the work of Brenda Capron for "particular mention". At Eastbourne College of Art, her tutors included Eric Ravilious and she was gold medallist. This entitled her to a further scholarship at Chelsea School of Art in London where she continued her studies as a pupil of Graham Sutherland and others. She also had a travelling scholarship to Paris. Early work Her paintings at this time were mainly figure paintings in oil on canvas, but she also excelled in pencil portraits and studies, and a pencil nude was her first major exhibited work, at the Royal Academy summer exhibition of 1932, when she was 24. She had by then (on 12 November 1929) married her first husband, E A R Landon, and is therefore listed in the published volumes of Royal Academy Exhibitors 1905-1970