Alfred Thomson RA (1894 - 1979)

RA Collection: People and Organisations

Alfred Reginald Thomson was born in Bangalore, India. He attended the Royal School for the Deaf and Dumb, Margate before studying at the London New School of Art, Kensington under C.M.Q. Orchardson and John Hassall.

Although he painted genre paintings and the occasional landscape, Thomson mainly worked as a portrait painter. He became a Member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1944. His sitters included Alfred Hitchock (1933; RA 600), Sir Charles Wheeler (1964: RA 113) and the Duke of Edinburgh (1964: RA 122). Among his group portraits were ‘The House of Lords in Session, 1961-1962’ (1964: RA 168; Palace of Westminster collection) and ‘The First Session of the Greater London Council, April 1964’ (1966; RA 606).

Thomson was Official War Artist to the R.A.F. (1940–44). He exhibited at United Artists exhibition (1940) in aid of the Lord Mayor’s Red Cross and St. John’s Fund and the Artists’ General Benevolent Institution. Thomson’s Royal Academy Diploma work ‘Between Ops’ (1945) belongs to his series of wartime works.

Throughout his career Thomson was commissioned to paint murals for a diverse range of buildings. His ‘Pickwick Panels’ (1922) for the Duncannon Hotel, London, were greatly acclaimed (the paintings went to US when hotel was demolished in 1930). He restored murals for the Saville Theatre, London and added one of his own in 1953. He painted murals for the Science Museum, London, the Palais de Danse, Derby, Children’s Library, Darlington and Birmingham Dental Hospital.

For many years Thomson made the decorations for the annual Chelsea Arts Ball. He designed several posters for the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), the most famous being ‘Take me by the Flying Scotsman’ (1932). He also designed the poster for the 1940 RA annual summer exhibition. (See: RAA/PRE/5/1/10).

Thomson exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy from 1920. He was elected an Associate of the R.A. in 1938 and a Royal Academician in 1945.

In the 1948 Olympic Games in London, Thomson became the last person to win a Gold Medal for painting as medals for art were abandoned in subsequent Olympic games.