There is a class of painters among us who, exhibiting year by year, never draw crowds or make sensations with their work, but nevertheless come insensibly to occupy positions of peculiar respect in the eyes of the more careful order of judges. To that class Armstrong belongs. . . . He has shown himself of those who see the raison d'etre of a picture by no means in its subject interest, but altogether in its pictorial aspect.... his painting, with its conscientious care and balance, its tenderness and reserve, its aim at style and at pictorial charm, is of a kind on which the English school, more than another, has good reason to congratulate itself. — Colvin 65-67
Biographical Material
Discussions
- Thomas Armstrong's Social Realism Works: Manchester and Salford Children
- Thomas Armstrong and the Aesthetic Movement: The Test [? The Lesson]
- A Decorative Scheme for the Dining Room, Bank Hall, Derbyshire, by Thomas Armstrong
Works
Bibliography
Boyes, J. F. "Chiefs of our National Museums. No. V. – The South Kensington Museum. Mr. Thomas Armstrong." The Art Journal (1891): 271-73.
Colvin, Sidney. "English Painters of the Present Day. XXIII – Thomas Armstrong."The Portfolio (1871): 65-67.
Dakers, Caroline and Daniel Robbins. George Aitchison. Leighton's Architect Revealed. London: Leighton House Museum, 2011.
Hawthorne, Julian. Shapes That Pass: Memories of the Old Days. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1928.
Lamont, L. M. Thomas Armstrong, C.B. A Memoir. London: Martin Secker, 1912.
Prettejohn, Elizabeth. "Aestheticism in Painting." Eds. Calloway, Stephen and Lynn Federle Orr. The Cult of Beauty. The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900. London: V&A Publishing, 2011, 64-79.
Created 20 March 2023