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William Thon Art

American, 1906-2000

William Thon was an American artist noted for his highly abstracted landscape images. He was born in New York City and spent his childhood summers camping on Staten Island. He developed a great love of travel, and in 1933 made an eight-month voyage to Cocos Islands in the Pacific. He debuted as a professional artist in the 1939 Corcoran Gallery Biennial exhibition. He joined the Navy during World War II, and shortly after the war won the Prix de Rome, a fellowship in Rome to the American Academy, for which he later served as a trustee. He received further recognition with his participation in the 1942 '"Artists for Victory" exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He held his first one-person show at the Midtown Galleries in New York in 1944. The gallery continued to represent him throughout his career. He had subsequent solo exhibitions at the Smith College Art Museum, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art and the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. He received an honorary Doctor of Arts from the Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, in 1957. He was a member of The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Academy of Design. In 1947, Thon’s year-long study at the American Academy proved pivotal in his career, when he began working in watercolor. Upon his return to America, he submitted a watercolor to the 1949 exhibition of the National Academy of Design, and that year, he was voted into the Academy membership. From thereon, he frequently exhibited at the Academy and won prizes, including the Benjamin Altman Prize in 1951, 1954, 1961, 1967 and 1969. In 1951, Thon received a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He often traveled to Italy, and in 1955 served in Rome as Artist-in-Residence at the American Academy. Thon chose to live in the relative isolation of Port Clyde, Maine, on a peninsula overlooking the sea, a quiet place, especially in winter. He preferred the company of sailors, craftsmen, lobstermen, a few fellow artists and his beloved wife, Helen. This area is credited as inspiring a stylistic breakthrough for Thon when he discovered an abandoned quarry near his property. There, he created numerous, increasingly abstract paintings of spidery trees with rectilinear slabs of interspersed granite. Each season, Thon would send his paintings off to the prestigious Midtown Galleries in New York City. His works bore the imprint of his vital connection to the raw, natural beauty of rural Maine, its rugged terrain, beautiful virgin forests, intemperate seas, and the human-made scatter of wooden buildings along its rocky shoreline. Thon continued to work even after macular degeneration had left him legally blind. From his estate gift of four million dollars, the Portland Museum of Art, Maine, received the biggest cash donation to that time. Thon was awarded numerous prizes and is represented in over 60 museum collections including, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Butler Institute of American Art, the Columbus Museum of Art, and in Maine, the Farnsworth Art Museum, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Ogunquit Museum of American Art.

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Artist: William Thon
Dealer: Wiscasset Bay Gallery
"Silvery Day, " William Thon, ink wash, sailboats, coastal, modernist
By William Thon
Located in Wiscasset, ME
William Thon, although born in New York, painted and lived most of his adult life in coastal Maine. Thon studied at the Arts Student League in New York, and exhibited in the 1930s an...
Category

20th Century Modern William Thon Art

Materials

Ink

"At Sea, " William Thon, ink wash, sailboat, modernist, 20th century
By William Thon
Located in Wiscasset, ME
William Thon, although born in New York, painted and lived most of his adult life in coastal Maine. Thon studied at the Arts Student League in New York, and exhibited in the 1930s an...
Category

20th Century Modern William Thon Art

Materials

Ink

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Two Boats
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William Thon art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic William Thon art available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by William Thon in paint, watercolor, ink and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the modern style. Not every interior allows for large William Thon art, so small editions measuring 9 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Gordon Grant, William Grauer, and Robert Noel Blair. William Thon art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $225 and tops out at $4,400, while the average work can sell for $1,650.

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