Bradley Walker Tomlin was perpetually curious about and inspired by different styles of art throughout his life, making him a unique figure in the abstract expressionist movement, and which may be part of the reason he has since been overlooked.

Compared to his contemporaries like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Tomlin’s work has, until recent years, been largely omitted from art historical discourse on the advent of abstract expressionism in 1940s and ‘50s New York. It’s possible that his subdued tableaux did not make as big a splash (pardon the pun) as Pollock’s drip paintings, or that his early dedication to lyrical cubist works caused historians to place him with an older generation, slightly removed from the young trailblazers who were seen as fully embracing their radically individual creative styles. While his life may not have had the exciting melodrama of some of the more famous American painters of the time and, in opposition to the bravado of others in the movement, Tomlin is said to have embodied “extreme personal modesty and reserve,” his style was a unique and avant-garde expression that is certainly worthy of study. 

Born and raised in Syracuse, New York, Tomlin showed promise as an artist from a young age. His brother describes, “As long ago as I can remember my brother had one purpose before him - to be an artist.” At only 15, Tomlin designed a major portion of the Syracuse city flag. His early years in college were marked by an interest in French Impressionism and also illustration, which he continued to pursue. In the following years, he illustrated childrens’ books and also designed covers for Conde Nast magazines House & Garden and Vogue. However, these were commercial endeavors, and should not necessarily come into the conversation about Tomlin’s stylistic development. (Hey, everyone’s gotta pay the bills.)

In 1923, Tomlin traveled to Paris where he had work accepted to the Salon. Alas, “la vie bohème” was not for him; the arguably conservative artist wrote in a letter that year that he was considering moving across the city, as he was “getting fed up with the artists, poets and strange looking people” around Montparnasse. He did however get to rub shoulders with superstars of the Parisian avant-garde there, as he spent some time at Gertrude Stein’s house, where he got to meet Georges Braque. Much later, in 1950, he dedicated a painting to Stein, titled Number 9 - In Praise of Gertrude Stein and which is in the collection of the MoMA. 

It was in the 1940s that Tomlin met Adolph Gottlieb, who introduced him into the big bad world of abstract expressionism. Though Tomlin was revered by his peers, with praise recorded from the likes of Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and Philip Guston, there are several possible reasons for his waning popularity since. One retrospective catalog describes Tomlin as a “a quiet, reserved, gay man, older and more traditional than the precocious avant-gardists dominating the Abstract Expressionist movement,” while an expert scholar on Tomlin adds that, “His innate subtlety, refinement, and taste often seem to be at odds with what is thought to be American pioneer strength and toughness.” From these comments, it is not a great leap to presume that perhaps homophobic attitudes prevented Tomlin from achieving the same acclaim as some of the aforementioned artists who had more ‘machismo.’ As an Artnet News journalist notes, “Despite the many gay artists involved in the Abstract Expressionist movement, a heteronormative pathos was deeply rooted in post-war American painting.”

There is also the indisputable fact that there are simply less of Tomlin’s paintings to be considered, as he did not begin to experiment with abstract expressionism until the last years of his life, as he died at the age of 53 in 1953 of a heart attack. This is in addition to the time when, in the ‘20s and ‘30s, Tomlin destroyed many of his earlier cubist works, burning them in a bonfire in his backyard in Woodstock, NY. Despite all this, critics and historians have come to appreciate Tomlin’s last series of works, which were abstract, somewhat geometric compositions of ribbon-like shapes inspired by his interest in Japanese calligraphy. Especially lauded is Tomlin’s understanding of color, showcased in the fabulous and inventive palettes of his final paintings. 

Tomlin's relative absence from the discourse may not be all bad - some even see it as a positive. As art historian Svetlana Alpers writes, “...curiously, the absence of huge market values and an established body of criticism lends the works an independence and a freshness. They are open for the looking.”