ALMA W. THOMAS (1891 - 1978) Atmosphere (Atmospheric Effect No. 4).
Acrylic, watercolor and pencil on Arches paper, 1971. 565x762 mm; 22½x30 inches. Signed in ink, lower right. With the Veritable Papier d'Arches Fin blindstamp, lower right.
Provenance: the artist, with a fragment of a typed label, with the title and the artist's address hand-written on the verso; Franz Bader Gallery, Washington, DC, with the gallery label on the frame back; Thomas R. Harney; thence by descent, private collection, Virginia.
Tom Harney was a prominent art critic in the late 1960s Washington art scene; he wrote art reviews and articles for the Washington Daily News from 1966-68. Harney wrote "When He Paints, He Pours", a profile of Sam Gilliam for its October 13, 1967 issue. He described the artist's preparations for his solo exhibition at the Phillips Collection, Gilliam's first at a museum. Harney was one of the first writers to describe the artist's studio practice in detail. He later joined the staff of the Smithsonian Institution in 1969, as Science Information Officer to the News Bureau of the Office of Public Affairs, and wrote for The Smithsonian Torch. In 1976 Harney became Writer-Editor at the National Museum of Natural History, and in 1990 he became NMNH's Public Information Officer.
Exhibited: Recent Paintings by Alma W. Thomas, Earth and Space Series, 1961-1971, Fisk University, Nashville, TN, October 10 - November 12, 1971.
Alma Thomas's Atmosphere is a superb, vivid colored example of her early 1970s works on paper, and one of her important Atmospheric Effect series of abstractions. Thomas developed this body of work between 1970 and 1974, and exhibited twelve numbered works from the series. The Atmospheric Effect series was a formal breakthrough for the artist, with Thomas adopting her most minimal approach to color field painting yet. Each of her compositions of acrylic on Arches paper depicts spectral bands of color, imagery that was inspired by new photographic imagery of light refracted through the atmosphere that were published by the NASA space program. They were first exhibited in her 1970 solo exhibition Alma Thomas: Earth and Space Paintings at the Franz Bader Gallery; the exhibition poster featured one of the watercolors. Other selections from this series were included in each of her subsequent museum solo exhibitions in the early 1970s at Fisk University, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Corcoran Museum of Fine Art. Today, Atmospheric Effect No. 1 and No. 2 are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
