Muriel E. Branegan Bacon [née Branegan], painter, was born to James and Mary Branegan in Grass Valley, California on 16 July 1909. After graduating as an honor student from Grass Valley High School in 1928, she received a scholarship to study painting at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. At the CSFA, she studied painting and sculpture. Bacon was awarded a National Scholarship which allowed her to enroll in the Art Students League in New York where she studied under Kenneth Hayes Miller. Following her time in New York, Bacon traveled to Paris, where she completed her formal studies at the Académie Julian.

During her time at Académie Julian, Bacon became immersed in the technique and style of the Fauvists. Once she had completed her studies she travelled extensively, sketching and painting in Hawaii, Africa, Pacific Oceania, Europe, California and the American Southwest. Around the late 1930s she married Allen F. Bacon and settled in Sausalito, California, where she continued to work and exhibit. 

In 1939, Bacon exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition, and in the late 1940s and 1950s she maintained a studio in San Francisco. She began to exhibit frequently in the San Francisco Bay Area, including at the prestigious Paul Elder Art Galleries (five solo shows); the Rotunda Gallery, San Francisco (another five solo shows in the 1950s and 1960s); two solo exhibitions in Honolulu; a show at the Oehlschlaeger Galleries, Chicago; and three major solo shows in the 1960s at the Maxwell Galleries in San Francisco. In the early 1970s her painting, Child with Fish, was selected to hang in the entrance of the International Child's Art Center in Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco.

Bacon moved north to Sonoma County in the 1960s and established a studio in Sebastopol. From that time forward there is no mention of exhibitions and her work gradually fell into obscurity. She died in Santa Rosa, California on August 10, 2002.

Bacon’s works have been honored with solo exhibitions at the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; the Dallas Museum of Art and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco (1955); and the City of Paris Gallery, San Francisco (1950). 

Some information found in a brief biography written by Maria Gonzales, art researcher; also the Union Times, Nevada City.