Bradley Walker Tomlin Original Irascibles First Generation New York Abstract Expressionist Lyrical American Mix Media Oil Textured Collage Painting
Bradley Walker Tomlin (August 19, 1899 – May 11, 1953), a prominent American artist, belonged to the first generation of New York Abstract Expressionist school of artists. Bradley Tomlin was born in Syracuse, New York, where he was the youngest of four children. Since high school, he wanted to be an artist. Tomlin returned to New York in the fall of 1924. He began exhibiting in 1925 at the Whitney Studio Club. In 1926 Tomlin returned to Europe, where he visited England, Italy, and Switzerland; but he mainly stayed in Paris. He returned to America in July 1927. He also discovered Woodstock, New York where he spent his summers.
Tomlin studied:
• 1917-1921: Syracuse University- College of Fine Arts, New York under Dr. Jeannette Scott and Professor Carl T. Hawley
• 1923–1924: Academie Colarossi and the Grande Chaumiѐre, Paris, France
He participated in the famous ‘’Ninth Street Show". According to John I. H. Baur, Curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tomlin’s "life and his work were marked by a persistent, restless striving toward perfection, in a truly classical sense of the word, towards that 'inner logic' of form which would produce a total harmony, an unalterable rightness, a sense of miraculous completion…It was only during the last five years of his life that the goal was fully reached, and his art flowered with a sure strength and authority."
Bradley Walker Tomlin was part of a group known as "The Irascible Eighteen"; a group of abstract painters, who protested the Metropolitan Museum of Art's policy towards American painting of the 1940s, and who posed for a famous picture in 1950. Members of the group besides Tomlin included: Hedda Sterne, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jimmy Ernst, Jackson Pollock, James Brooks, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Theodoros Stamos, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko.
Tomlin's work matured from approximately 1947 when his work represented neither his earlier cubist or surrealist influences.
Though highly textured, Tomlin's work is more lyrical and less gestural than those of his contemporaries, Pollock or de Kooning.
During the depression, Tomlin's teaching positions included:
• 1932 - 1941: Sarah Lawrence College
• 1932–1933: Buckley School
• 1933–1934: Dalton School
His art teachers were:
• Cornelia Moses, a former pupil of Arthur Wesley Dow
• Hugo Gari Wagner was his teacher to study modeling
• Frank London was his mentor and teacher
Selected Solo Exhibitions
• 1922: Skaneatele and Cazenovia, NY (watercolors)
• 1925: Anderson Galleries, NY (watercolors)
• 1926, 1927: Montross Gallery, NY
• 1931, 1944: Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, NY
• 1950, 1953: Betty Parsons Gallery, NY
• 1955: Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington, D.C.
• 1957: “Bradley Walker Tomlin,” circ. Exhibition organized by the Art Galleries of the University of California, Los Angeles, in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art’’
• 1949, 1951: University of Illinois
• 1951: 9th Street Art Exhibition, NYC
• 1951: “Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America,” Museum of Modern Art New York; University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
• 1952: “Fifteen Americans,” Museum of Modern Art, New York;
• 1953: Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; “Second Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture Stable Gallery,” NYC
• 1954-1955: “The New Decade,” Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC
• 1955: Musѐe d’Art Moderne Paris, France
• 1969: “New American Painting and Sculpture,” Museum of Modern Art, New York
On Sunday, May 10, 1953, Tomlin drove with his friends to a party at Jackson Pollock's house on Long Island, from which he returned about midnight, feeling ill. The following day, he was admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital where he suffered a heart attack and passed away, at seven that evening. Bradley Walker Tomlin passed away, at the age of fifty-three.
Bradley Walker Tomlin
(1899-1953)
24"X36", Plus Original Frame
Collage, Oil, Mixed Media on Canvas
Signed Lower Right
All original condition
No overpaints, or restoration
Very good/excellent condition, No condition issues
Still gallery wrapped on reverse
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