Bradley Walker Tomlin

Bradley Walker Tomlin (August 19, 1899 – May 11, 1953) belonged to the generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists. He participated in the famous ‘’Ninth Street Show.’’ According to John I. H. Baur, Curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tomlin’s life and his work were marked by a persistent, restless striving toward perfection, in a truly classical sense of the word, towards that “inner logic” of form which would produce a total harmony, an unalterable rightness, a sense of miraculous completion…It was only during the last five years of his life that the goal was fully reached, and his art flowered with a sure strength and authority.

Born in Syracuse, New York, Tomlin was the youngest of four children. Since his high school days he wanted to be an artist.

His art teachers were:

Tomlin studied:

Tomlin returned to New York in the fall of 1924. He began exhibiting in 1925 at the Whitney Studio Club. In 1926 Tomlin returned to Europe, where he visited England, Italy and Switzerland but he mainly stayed in Paris. He returned to America in July 1927. He also discovered Woodstock, New York where he spent his summers.

During the depression Tomlin sought teaching positions:

“On Sunday, May 10, 1953, Tomlin drove with his friends to a party at the Jackson Pollocks’ house on Long Island, from which he returned about midnight, feeling ill.” The following day, he was admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital where he suffered a heart attack and died at seven that night. Bradley Walker Tomlin died at the age of fifty-three.

Smithsonian Institution Research Information System; Archival, Manuscript and Photographic Collections, Bradley Walker Tomlin

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