Earning her living as a portraitist, Arrah Lee Gaul was also an exceptional landscape and seascape painter. She was the granddaughter of John Parkinson Gaul born and raised in Philadelphia and graduated from the Philadelphia High School for girls and the Philadelphia School of Design for Women.

A special influence on her art career was Henry B Snell, whose classes she attended in Brittany and Amalfi. In 1917, she joined a group of women artists who became known as "The Philadelphia Ten," and in 1918, according to some sources, she married artist-designer Alfred Laurens Brennan, who died three years later. In 1921, she signed her exhibition entries with the last name of Brennan at the Pennsylvania Academy, having use...