Illustrative of his bold painterly style, Bob Thompson’s The Family, 1961, presents a beautifully abstracted, yet recognizable family portrait. The painting is one of around 1,000 works Thompson created during his all-too-short eight-year career before his premature death in 1966 at the age of 28. In the first museum show dedicated to his work in over two decades, Thompson’s legacy is currently being celebrated in the nationally touring exhibition This House is Mine, which began last year at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, and has since traveled to the Smart Museum, Chicago, the High Museum, Atlanta, and now to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
Before moving to Europe in 1961, the year this work was painted, Thompson first studied at the University of Louisville, followed by a stint in New York City. As a Black figurative painter in the 1950s and 1960s, Thompson was greatly influenced by other artists in his cohort. Among these peers were musicians, writers, and visual artists. He was particularly influenced by jazz, frequenting places like The Five Spot and Slugs' Saloon. Thompson was able to move abroad with his wife on a fellowship from the Whitney Foundation. It can be surmised that this work was painted somewhere in continental Europe, where he traversed cities looking for the 18th and 19th century paintings he was so enamored by.
Follower of Poussin, The Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Image: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.49 Thompson was known for his profound interest in art history, with a particular fondness for the Old Masters, often quoting references to Francisco Goya and Nicolas Poussin. His flat, modern way of painting, coupled with a penchant for the past, set Thompson apart from his peers. Referencing some of art history’s most famous landscapes and subjects, The Family bears resemblance to Poussin’s The Holy Family on the Steps from more than three centuries prior. The position of Thompson’s faceless figures suggests a family adoring their newborn. Through this recreation, the artist inserts himself and his characteristic style into the canon of Old Master painting, leaving us to question to what period this family belongs. The present work is a masterful portrayal of Thompson’s unique fusion of classical European techniques with the colorful dynamism tied to Abstract Expressionism.
Provenance
The artist
Noah Goldowsky Gallery, New York
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen D. Paine, Boston
Museum of The National Center of Afro-American Artists, Boston (gifted from the above in 1974)
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2012Exhibited
Provincetown Art Association and Museum; Boston, Northeastern University Art Gallery, Northeastern University, Kind of Blue: Benny Andrews, Emilio Cruz, Earle Pilgrim, Bob Thompson, August 22–September 28, 1986
Los Angeles, California Afro-American Museum; Niagara Falls, Buscaglia-Castellani Art Gallery, Niagara University; Montgomery Museum of Art; Akron Art Museum, Novae: William H. Johnson and Bob Thompson, May 4, 1990–March 24, 1991, p. 64 (illustrated on the back cover)
Property of a Notable West Coast Collection
101
The Family
signed, titled and variously inscribed ""The family" B Thompson" on the reverse
oil on panel
20 x 23 1/2 in. (50.8 x 59.7 cm)
Painted in 1961.
Estimate
$60,000 - 80,000
Sold for $214,200
Annie Dolan
Specialist, Head of Day Sale, Morning Session
+1 212 940 1288
adolan@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session
New York Auction 16 November 2022
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