A Saline Bath, Royal Air Force Hospital 1943
Alfred Reginald Thomson (1894–1979)
IWM (Imperial War Museums)
Painter, commercial artist and illustrator born in Bangalore, India, a mute following a fall as a baby. He attended the Royal School for the Deaf and Dumb, Margate. Artistically he studied at the eponymous John Hassell Art School based in Kensington, subsequently working as a commercial artist. He also painted murals for a number of private and public clients including Birmingham Dental Hospital, the Duncannon Arms and the Science Museum. In 1934, a series of six murals he painted for the Limmer & Trinidad Lake Asphalt Company were first exhibited at the Building Exhibition at Olympia, London. During the 1920s and 1930s Thomson designed advertising for Three Nuns tobacco, Horlick's and the London & North Eastern Railway. Among posters designed by Thomson for the LNER were 'Then and Now – Over 100 Bathing Resorts' (c.
He was known amongst his friends as Tommy Thomson and an illustrated article by him appeared in Drawing & Design, November 1920. He showed at the RA from 1920 and was elected an Associate of the RA in 1938 and a full member in 1945. Despite his handicap, he was appointed an Official War Artist with the RAF, 1940–1944 and he was awarded a Gold Medal at the 1948 London Olympic Games for his depiction of sporting scenes. Examples of his work are in the collections of the ACGB, Bradford Museums and Galleries, Brighton & Hove Art Gallery, City of London Corporation, Darlington Borough Art Collection, Glasgow Museums, IWM, Kirklees Museums and Galleries, NAM, Nottingham City Museums and Galleries, NPG, RAF Museum, Hendon, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, Science Museum and the Tate Gallery.
Text source: Liss Llewellyn
