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Martin Euclid Thompson

1830
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 774
Although Thompson (1789–1877) started his career around 1816 as a carpenter, his ability as a designer and planner soon won him recognition as a promising architect in New York. In 1826, he joined a group of younger artists who founded the National Academy of Design. The next year, he became a partner of the architect Ithiel Town, whose library of reference books and engravings soon made their office in Thompson’s Merchants' Exchange a gathering place for architects and artists. In 1822 Thompson designed the facade of the Second Bank of the United States on Wall Street. In 1915, the facade of the building was dismantled and reinstalled in the American Wing of this Museum, and it today fronts the main courtyard of the Wing. Mount's catalogue of his own work notes that in 1830 he painted portraits of Martin E. Thompson and his wife; a year later this canvas was first exhibited at the National Academy of Design. The careful compositional and tonal balance of the portrait is akin to that found in the late works of Gilbert Stuart and John Vanderlyn. The mood of serenity it creates and the presence of a drawing of a classical pediment suggest the neoclassical aesthetic principles embodied in the sitter’s architectural designs.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Martin Euclid Thompson
  • Artist: William Sidney Mount (American, Setauket, New York 1807–1868 Setauket, New York)
  • Date: 1830
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 29 3/4 x 24 1/2 in. (75.6 x 62.2 cm)
  • Credit Line: Bequest of Susan Louise Thompson, 1959
  • Object Number: 59.68
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

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William Sidney Mount (American, Setauket, New York 1807–1868 Setauket, New York)
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Artist Sketching at Stony Brook, New York (from McGuire Scrapbook)
William Sidney Mount (American, Setauket, New York 1807–1868 Setauket, New York)
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