Alfred Reginald Thomson (1894-1979)

Painter, commercial artist and illustrator born in Bangalore, India, a mute following a fall as a baby. He attended the Royal School for the Deaf and Dumb, Margate. Artistically he studied at the eponymous John Hassell Art School based in Kensington, subsequently working as a commercial artist. He also painted murals for a number of private and public clients including Birmingham Dental Hospital, the Duncannon Arms and the Science Museum. In 1934, a series of six murals he painted for the Limmer & Trinidad Lake Asphalt Company were first exhibited at the Building Exhibition at Olympia, London. During the 1920's and 1930's Thomson designed advertising for Three Nuns tobacco, Horlick's and the London & North Eastern Railway. Among posters designed by Thomson for the LNER were 'Then and Now - Over 100 Bathing Resorts' (c.1931), 'Take Me by the Flying Scotsman' (1932) and 'Travel LNER at a Penny a Mile' (c.1932). In the 1920's he wo