Alfred Reginald Thomson was a multi-faceted artist who was highly sought-after as a commercial artist and portrait painter. Across his career, Thomson found success and critical acclaim designing iconic advertising campaigns for the LNER and painting portraits of the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and the Duke of Edinburgh. He also distinguished himself as an Official War Artist in the RAF, and won a gold medal for painting at the 1948 London Olympics.
Alfred Reginald Thomson was born on 10 December 1894 in Bangalore, India, to George Thomson, a British Civil Engineer, and his Irish wife Florence (neé Green). Thomson was born deaf and on the family’s return to England, he was enrolled at the age of seven at the Royal School for Deaf Children in Margate, where he learned sign language. After attending a private school in Brondesbury, north London, intended to help with his speech, he studied at the London Art School in Kensington, where he was tutored by C M Q Orchardson and John Hassall.
However, Thomson failed to pass the exam for entry into the Royal Academy Schools, and instead was sent to work on a farm in Lenham, Kent, by his father, who strongly opposed his son pursuing a career in the arts. He soon returned to London and found work designing posters for a whisky company and later a series of posters for Daimler cars.
By the end of the First World War, Alfred Reginald Thomson was establishing himself as a commercial artist. In the interwar period, Thomson was commissioned to design advertising campaigns for companies such as Three Nuns Tobacco, Horlick’s and, most famously, for the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER). He produced some of the LNER’s most iconic posters during this time, including the ‘Then and Now’ campaign and ‘Take me by the Flying Scotsman’. In 1922, he produced a series of murals, the ‘Pickwick Panels’, for the Duncannon Hotel, which were greatly acclaimed and were saved and transported to the United States when the hotel was demolished in 1930. In 1934, a series of murals Thomson produced for the Limmer & Trinidad Lake Asphalt Company were exhibited at Olympia, London. Thomson would also design murals for the Science Museum, London, the Palais de Danse, Derby, the Darlington Children’s Library and Birmingham Dental Hospital. In 1953, he restored murals at the Saville Theatre, London, and added one of his own. For many years, he was commissioned to design the decorations for the annual Chelsea Arts Ball.
In addition to his work as a commercial artist, Alfred Reginald Thomson developed a reputation as a talented portrait painter. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy from 1920, became an associate in 1938 and a full Royal Academician in 1945. Sitters for his portraits included Alfred Hitchcock (Royal Academy, 1933), Sir Charles Wheeler (Royal Academy, 1964) and the Duke of Edinburgh (Royal Academy, 1964). He became a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1944.
During the Second World War, he completed a number of commissions for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee. In September 1942, he took over from Eric Kennington as a full-time salaried War Artist attached to the Air Ministry, though he was later forced to resign after being wounded in an accidental shooting. In 1948, he represented Great Britain at the London Olympics, winning a gold medal for his painting of boxers at the London Amateur Boxing Championships. He would be the first and last British man to win an Olympic medal for painting before it was discontinued.
Later in his career, he was commissioned to paint a number of works at the Houses of Parliament. In 1960, he produced an oil painting of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan at the despatch box, and a large scale painting of the House of Lords in 1961. In May 1979, he painted from the public gallery as Margaret Thatcher spoke at the despatch box on her first day as Prime Minister. Titled First Time at the Box, the painting was unfinished by the time of Thomson’s death on 27 October 1979 and was considered lost until its discovery at a garage sale in 2015.
