Thomas Brownell Eldred

American (1903-1993)

Born in Climax, Michigan in 1903, painter and printmaker Thomas Brownell Eldred studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago under John Norton and later at the Art Students League in New York with Thomas Hart Benton and Guy Pène  DuBois. Betweem 1933 and 1938, Eldred taught at the Brooklyn Museum Art School under the WPA Art Program. He traveled to Paris and studied with Stanley William Hayter in his influential workshop, Atelier 17, along with Marc Chagall, Joan Miró and Roberto Matta. In 1940, Hayter opened a school in New York where Eldred joined him again, along with artists Robert Motherwell, Louise Nevelson and Jackson Pollock.

Eldred exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, Detroit Institute of Arts, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Virginia Museum of Art and at the Edward Hopper House Foundation in New York, among others. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Guggenheim Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art.