Thomson, Richard 1953–

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Thomson, Richard 1953–

PERSONAL:

Born 1953.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Edinburgh, School of Arts, Culture, and Environment, 20 Chambers St., Edinburgh EH1 1JZ, Scotland; fax: 440 131650 8019. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, art historian, curator, and educator. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art, 1996—. Visual Arts Research Institute, Edinburgh, founding director, 1999-2004. National Galleries of Scotland, trustee. Curator of museum exhibitions around the world.

MEMBER:

Association of Art Historians, Institut national d'histoire de l'art, École de Printemps Network.

AWARDS, HONORS:

J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA, guest scholarship, 1993; Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship, 1995-96.

WRITINGS:

Toulouse-Lautrec, Oresko Books (London, England), 1977.

Harold Gilman, 1876-1919, Arts Council of Great Britain (London, England), 1981.

Seurat, Phaidon Press (Oxford, England), 1985.

Impressionist Drawings: From British Public and Private Collections, Phaidon Press/Arts Council of Great Britain (Oxford, England), 1986.

The Private Degas, Thames & Hudson (New York, NY), 1987.

Degas: The Nudes, Thames & Hudson (New York, NY), 1988.

Camille Pissarro: Impressionism, Landscape, and Rural Labour, South Bank Center (London, England), 1990.

Edgar Degas: Waiting, J. Paul Getty Museum (Malibu, CA), 1995.

(With John Leighton, David Bomford, Jo Kirby, and Ashok Roy) Seurat and the Bathers, National Gallery Publications (New Haven, CT), 1997.

(Editor) Framing France: The Representation of Landscape in France, 1870-1914, Manchester University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Chris Stolwijk) Theo Van Gogh, 1857-1891: Art Dealer, Collector, and Brother of Vincent, Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1999.

(With Phillip Dennis Cate and Gale B. Murray) Prints Abound: Paris in the 1890s: From the Collections of Virginia and Ira Jackson and the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), 2000.

(With Michael Clarke) Monet: The Seine and the Sea, 1878-1883, National Galleries of Scotland (Edinburgh, Scotland), 2003.

(Editor, with Frances Fowle) Soil and Stone: Impressionism, Urbanism, Environment, Varie (Edinburgh, Scotland), 2003.

The Troubled Republic: Visual Culture and Social Debate in France, 1889-1900, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2004.

(With Phillip Dennis Cate, Mary Weaver Chapin, and Florence E. Coman) Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre, National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), 2005.

Contributor to books, including Vincent Van Gogh and the Painters of the Petit Boulevard, Saint Louis Art Museum/Rizzoli (St. Louis, MO), 2001. Van Gogh Studies, member of editorial board, 2005—.

SIDELIGHTS:

Richard Thomson is a writer, art historian, exhibition curator, and educator based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. There, he serves as the Watson Gordon Chair of Fine Art, an appointment he has held since 1996. Thomson was the founding director of the Visual Arts Research Institute in Edinburgh. "An expert on late nineteenth and early twentieth century French art, he has published widely in this important and lively field," commented a biographer on the University of Edinburgh Web site. He has been curator, either by himself or in collaboration with others, of exhibitions throughout Europe, Great Britain, and the United States, in cities such as Glasgow, Paris, Washington, DC, Amsterdam, Manchester, and London. As a scholar, he studies subjects such as the sociohistoric representation of city and landscape in art; interconnections and relationships between visual art and literature, politics, and popular culture; methods and modes of portraiture and regional art; and the many complex facets of the international art market. In addition to his professional and academic work, Thomson also serves as a trustee of the National Museum of Scotland.

Thomson is the author or coauthor of a number of exhibition catalogs. Camille Pissarro: Impressionism, Landscape, and Rural Labour, is an "attractive, compact catalogue of a British exhibit" of the works of Pissarro, who was among "the most independent of the impressionists," commented Genevieve Stuttaford in a Publishers Weekly review. Thomson analyzes and interprets Pissarro's paintings of rural laborers, calm landscapes, industrial suburbs, and important seaports as a reaction to modernization of the world he already knew. Seurat and the Bathers, another catalog, written with John Leighton, David Bomford, Jo Kirby, and Ashok Roy, covers works that appeared at an exhibition at the National Gallery in London. The authors consider issues such as the technical aspects of Seurat's work and the artistic context for the paintings. They also provide a historical assessment of Seurat's career and output, as it led up to the work that is considered his masterpiece. The catalog "succeeds on both the popular and the scholarly level," remarked Library Journal contributor Jack Perry Brown.

In The Troubled Republic: Visual Culture and Social Debate in France, 1889-1900, Thomson provides an in-depth and "provocative study of how artists of fin de siecle France viewed and depicted four key social and political issues of the period," reported Eric A. Arnold, Jr., in History: Review of New Books. These areas are the body, sexuality, and birth rate; the Catholic Church and religion in opposition to secularism; the crowd and the random violence that sometimes flared; and revanche, or revenge, against hated aggressor Germany for the demoralizing and humiliating seizure of the Alsace and Lorraine areas in 1871. Thomson "explores this era with insight and clarity," noted Library Journal reviewer Ilene Skeen. "In each chapter Thomson begins with a discussion of what historians have said about each debate and then proceeds to look at the interplay between the debate and visual culture," reported Michael Scott Christofferson in the Canadian Journal of History. Thomson looks at issues such as the connection of sexuality with decadence, and how healthy bodies were considered moral whereas deformed or unhealthy bodies were immoral. He addresses the notion that France had largely forgotten or abandoned desires of revenge against Germany by the 1890s, and points out that artwork found in the form of war memorials and monuments suggests that the resentment against Germany was still strong some twenty years after the loss of Alsace-Lorraine.

"The book will have great value for both French art historians of the fin de siecle and political, social, and religious historians of the period as well," Arnold concluded. Christofferson called the book "an essential resource for those interested in the art and history of the 1890s. Well-written, with many reproductions of the works discussed, it is a good read for scholars and interested general readers alike."

Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre is another exhibition catalog, by Thomson and coauthors Phillip Dennis Cate, Mary Weaver Chapin, and Florence E. Coman. It is "factual and clearly written, with sound and convincing analyses and no theoretical or ideological obfuscations," observed Jeffrey Meyers in a Wilson Quarterly review. The authors explore in detail the settings and contexts of Lautrec's work as it relates to the Parisian district of Montmartre. They are concerned with the atmosphere in which Lautrec worked, and the establishments and entertainments he had access to, including cafes, cabarets, dance halls, brothels, and circuses. They explore the burgeoning fame of Lautrec after he created several striking posters that were placed throughout Paris and which depicted popular cabaret entertainments and their audiences. The first was titled "Moulin Rougue: La Goulue," Meyers remarked, and "besides making the 27-year-old artist a celebrity, the astonishing work transformed lithography into high art." Reviewer John A. Walker, in an Art Book assessment, commented that the book's "essays succeed in situating Lautrec's images within their historic, social, political, cultural and artistic contexts." Further, Walker observed, "Lautrec's vivid portrayals of entertainment personalities such as La Goulue, Jane Avril and Aristide Bruant contributed to their celebrity and he himself became one."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, October, 2006, Philip Nord, review of The Troubled Republic: Visual Culture and Social Debate in France, 1889-1900, p. 1258.

Apollo, October, 2005, Christopher Riopelle, "Pathology of an Era: France's Obsession with Its Supposed Degeneracy Lies at the Heart of Richard Thomson's Ambitious Attempt to Relate French Visual Culture of the 1890s to Its Political and Social Context," review of The Troubled Republic, p. 64.

Art Book, November, 2005, John A. Walker, review of Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre, p. 23.

Art Bulletin, March, 1994, Howard Lay, review of Toulouse-Lautrec, p. 177.

Art History, March, 1990, Kathleen Eve Jones, review of Degas: The Nudes, p. 118.

Canadian Journal of History, winter, 2006, Michael Scott Christofferson, review of The Troubled Republic, p. 565.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, February, 1998, F.A. Trapp, review of Seurat and the Bathers, p. 982; December, 2000, J. Weidman, review of Theo Van Gogh, 1857-1891: Art Dealer, Collector, and Brother of Vincent, p. 699; October, 2005, T.L. Wilson, review of The Troubled Republic, p. 279.

French Review, October, 1998, Adelia V. Williams, review of Seurat and the Bathers, p. 145; May, 2000, Adelia V. Williams, review of Framing France: The Representation of Landscape in France, 1870-1914, p. 1240.

History: Review of New Books, summer, 2005, Eric A. Arnold, review of The Troubled Republic, p. 154.

Journal of Modern History, March, 2007, Andrea Mansker, review of The Troubled Republic, p. 195.

Library Journal, February 1, 1986, Robin Kaplan, review of Seurat, p. 75; July, 1990, Joan Levin, review of Camille Pissarro: Impressionism, Landscape, and Rural Labour, p. 94; January, 1998, Jack Perry Brown, review of Seurat and the Bathers, p. 94; June 1, 2005, Ilene Skeen, review of The Troubled Republic, p. 127.

New York Review of Books, December 19, 1991, Richard Dorment, review of Toulouse-Lautrec, p. 15.

New York Times, December 8, 1985, John Russell, review of Seurat, p. 12.

New York Times Book Review, December 8, 1985, John Russell, review of Seurat, p. 12; June 5, 1988, John Russell, review of Degas, p. 12; December, 1991, John Russell, review of Toulouse-Lautrec, p. 9.

Publishers Weekly, October 25, 1985, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Seurat, p. 53; March 25, 1988, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Degas, p. 56; May 18, 1990, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Camille Pissarro, p. 75.

Reference & Research Book News, August, 1990, review of Camille Pissarro, p. 21; November, 1998, review of Framing France, p. 30; February, 2004, review of Soil and Stone: Impressionism, Urbanism, Environment, p. 209.

Style 1900, September 22, 2005, Eve M. Kahn, review of Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre, p. 87.

Times Literary Supplement, March 24, 1989, Tim Hilton, review of Degas, p. 305; November 8, 1991, Elizabeth Cowling, review of Toulouse-Lautrec, p. 16; October 14, 2005, "The Mass Is Feminine," review of The Troubled Republic, p. 10.

Virginia Quarterly Review, fall, 2005, Lou Tanner, review of The Troubled Republic, p. 287.

Wilson Quarterly, June 22, 2005, Jeffrey Meyers, "High Ground, Low Life," review of Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre, p. 111.