Brandon Thomas
Date of birth: 1849
Place of birth: Liverpool
Date of death: 1914.06.19
Category: author
Identity:
Brandon Thomas and his wife had a daughter called Amy, who later became Mrs Barnes-Brand of Shamley Green, Surrey.
Life:
Brandon Thomas was a fervent admirer of Whistler. In May 1885 he was gifted Study in Grey for the Portrait of F. R. Leyland y095 by M. H. Spielmann, who had purchased it in Whistler's bankruptcy sale in 1880 and had known that Thomas had admired it.
Thomas was among those included in the preliminary preparations for the dinner organised by William Christian Symons in 1889 to congratulate Whistler on being made an honorary member of the Royal Academy in Munich (#05635).
The Thomas' daughter Amy posed for Whistler in the autumn of 1890 when she was six months old. When her mother brought her back for further sittings a few months later, at Whistler's request, she had so dramatically changed that Whistler told her mother he 'wanted the one he had before' and sent them home. Portrait of Miss Amy Brandon Thomas y392 was not finished until 1895. Thomas considered it to be beautiful: 'a spirit, a shadow, a divine sketch' (#05671). At this date the Thomas' were living at 42 Cadogan Terrace, S.W. (#05442).
Brandon Thomas and his wife appeared in a lithograph by Whistler, The Garden c040, taking tea along with Walter Sickert, Sidney Starr, Beatrix Whistler and Ethel Birnie Philip in Whistler's garden at Cheyne Walk in late June 1891. In 1897 Whistler referred to him affectionately as 'Brandy Thomas' [#07868]. In 1901 Thomas was living in Kensington.
Brandon Thomas could possibly be the playwright, actor and author, Walter Brandon Thomas, who made his first stage appearance in 1879 and whose plays include The Gold Craze (1889) and Charley's Aunt (1892). However, sources are conflicting. Who's Who states that he was born in Hull in 1865. The Cambridge Guide to World Theatre claims he was born in Liverpool in 1856. According to Who's Who he did not marry until 1892, which does not fit in chronologically with details given in Pennell or the Whistler correspondence.
Bibliography:
UK Census 1901; Who's Who, London, 1905; ; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 ; Banham, Martin (ed.), Cambridge Guide to World Theatre, Cambridge, 1988; Spink, Nesta R., Harriet K. Stratis, and Martha Tedeschi, The Lithographs of James McNeill Whistler, (gen. eds, Harriet K. Stratis and Martha Tedeschi), 2 vols., Chicago, 1998 .
