1911- 1993
Theme/Style – Modernism, landscapes, portraits
Media – Oil, watercolor
Artistic Focus – Paul Leland Thompson’s landscapes seem to be full of dark mystery, but rather than conveying loneliness, their emptiness has an expectant quality. Especially interesting are his oil paintings, which are quite rare.
Career Highlights –
- Paul Leland Thompson was born in Buffalo, Iowa in 1911.
- Thompson studied at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and at the Corcoran Gallery School of Art in Washington, DC.
- In 1933, Thompson enlisted in the U.S. Navy in San Francisco, and served as a radioman aboard the U.S.S. Oriole from 1938 to 1940.
- Thompson painted two portraits of members of the Circus Fans Association, which in 1944 were on display in Washington DC and printed in the Washington Times-Herald.
- Two of Thompson’s circus paintings were also exhibited in the 1944 annual exhibition of the Society of Washington Artists at the Corcoran Gallery.
- Thompson was a member of the Washington Society of Landscape Painters from 1945 to 1947.
- By the late 1950s Thompson was living in Plainfield, New Jersey. He received first prize at the Art Center of the Oranges exhibition in East Orange; and the 1959 prize for painting at the New Jersey State Art Show in Clinton.
- Thompson was included in the 1959 Art U.S.A. exhibition, and exhibited in San Francisco at the San Francisco Museum of Art and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor; at the National Academy of Art and Knoedler Galleries in New York; as well as at the Honolulu Academy of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Newark Museum.
- In 1960 Thompson had a solo show of his watercolors in Bernardsville, New Jersey.
Selection of Works by this Artist
View of Pasquale’s
Tower from Kearny Street, San Francisco
Bibliographic references are available upon request.