Alfred Thomson

Alfred Reginald Thomson (10 December 1894 – 27 October 1979) was an English artist and Olympic Gold Medalist for painting, most notable for being an official War Artist to the Royal Air Force during World War Two. He was deaf from birth.

Biography

Thomson was born in Bangalore in India where his father George was a British civil servant who had married an Irish woman, Florence Green. Thomson was deaf from birth and when the family returned to Britain from India he attended the Royal School for Deaf Children at Margate.

Although Thomson attended the London Art School in Kensington for a time, under C.M.Q. Orchardson, a son of William Quiller Orchardson, and was tutored by John Hassall, he failed to pass the exam for entry into the Royal Academy School, and his father sent him to work on a farm in Lenham, Kent, and forbade him from doing any art. His portrait of Dame Emily Blair DBE RRC , Matron-in-Chief of Princess Mary’s RAF Nursing Service, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1944 and is held by the Royal Air Force Museum.

In 1945 Thomson was elected to the Royal Academy and soon became a highly respected society portrait painter. He also continued to paint murals, most notably for the Science Museum and the London Dental School. 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.