Richard Earl Thompson

Richard Earl Thompson (September 26, 1914 – August 6, 1991) was a 20th-century American Impressionist painter who began his career as a commercial illustrator in Chicago, Illinois. In 1959, he broke away from a career as a commercial illustrator, which began in 1933, to pursue Impressionist painting. He was a prolific painter, sometimes compared stylistically to Claude Monet.

Early years

Thompson was born at West Suburban Hospital in Oak Park, Illinois. Richard's father, Abijah Snyder Thompson, was an illustrator and commercial art director for Montgomery Ward in Chicago. At a young age Thompson was introduced to many of his father's colleagues, sparking an early interest in the arts. He started to draw pencil sketches at age eight after watching his father draw at home in the evening. Richard's father also shared with his son his love for fishing and nature. When it was seasonable, they would travel from Chicago to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, on weekend fishing trips. The nature scenes he observed on these excursions became subjects for his sketches. At age ten, Richard awoke a couple of hours before his parents on Christmas morning to find a gift with his name under the Christmas tree. Upon opening, he found it to be his own paint box together with canvas board, brushes, and paints. He set up a still life with an apple, orange, and a piece of drapery fabric from his mother's sewing room. He painted for about two hours, and when his parents awoke they saw Richard's first finished painting. They were so proud of his achievement that it served to intensify his desire to paint.

His mother, Vera Thompson, was interested in the arts and music and encouraged Richard as a vocalist. He had already started to develop a career as a boy soprano by age ten and sang on the Blue Network on NBC's The National Farm and Home Hour radio program. Opportunities for further vocal training arose, but with his changing voice and his interest in art, Thompson made a decision to pursue art rather than music. in Milwaukee. Two years later, in 1972, father and son traveled to Israel and France to gather new material for future paintings. Another new body of paintings was produced from the second trip. Trips within the U.S. included the vividly colored New England states in the fall and the beautiful spring budding of the Southeast. In February 1978 Thompson was interviewed by Hugh Downs on the National Public Television program “Over Easy. ” Thompson's career catapulted. Paintings sales in the new gallery were brisk, and Thompson enjoyed a lifestyle that allowed him freedom to paint.

In July 1979 a feature article in The Milwaukee Journal, written by art critic James Auer, gave Thompson the title of “Wisconsin's Monet.” He admitted he was influenced by the great Impressionist Claude Monet. Thompson also felt much more could be explored after the era of Impressionism ended. This is where he felt he was the continuing link and could further the work started by the early Impressionists. He was devoted to colors created by the sun. “Color is then unlimited, as the sun is ever changing,” he said. and written by art historian Patricia Jobe Pierce. During the summer of 1990 a film crew visited his summer home in northern Wisconsin to film his life, loves, painting, and philosophy. Unfortunately, he did not live to see the film because he died from pancreatic cancer on August 6, 1991. The film is titled American Impressionist, Richard Earl Thompson from the Holiday Video Library, a division of Finley Holiday Films.

Thompson produced more than 1,525 numbered paintings in his fine arts career. He had numerous reviews, and his works adorned many covers of accredited magazines such as Reader's Digest, American Art Review, Southwest Art, Western Art Digest, Midwest Art, International Fine Art Collector, and Country Gentleman. Thompson's paintings were chosen for eight covers on The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) magazine, with comprehensive articles included for each. He was a regular on the covers of Yankee Magazine and Fortune's Almanac.

Thompson had eighteen one-man exhibits and was collected in private and corporate collections worldwide. Among them are The Lewer Agency, Kansas City, Missouri; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Naval Art Collection, Pentagon, Washington, D.C.; R.W. Norton Art Gallery, Shreveport, Louisiana;, Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin; and The Southland Corporation, Dallas, Texas. His work was exhibited in three museums – Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin, the Norton Art Museum & Gallery, Shreveport, Louisiana and Charles Allis Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

President John F. Kennedy's tragic event in 1963, marked 50 years in 2013. Charlie Scheips, the author of the "Art Set" column of the New York Social Diary, wrote a retrospect to 1963 and the turbulent times that forever changed our country and the impact it made on the art world. Artist Richard Earl Thompson was included in his article which can be seen below in External links.

His thirty years as an American Impressionist painter were his happiest. Thompson remained an avid fisherman throughout his life and enjoyed classical music and good cigars, especially while painting. He maintained homes on waterfronts throughout his lifetime. One was a summer home on Big Round Lake near Hayward, Wisconsin in the northern part of the state, and the other was a winter retreat in the Florida Keys on the Gulf of Mexico, both equipped with painting studios designed by son and architect, Dan Thompson .