From NY to Nebo: The Artistic Journey of Eugene Thomason

A product of the industrialized New South, Eugene Healan Thomason (1895-1972) made the obligatory pilgrimage to New York to advance his art education and launch his career. Like so many other aspiring American artists, he understood that the city offered unparalleled personal and professional opportunities―prestigious schools, groundbreaking teachers, and an intoxicating cosmopolitan milieu―for a promising young painter in the early 1920s. The patronage of one of the nation's most powerful tycoons afforded him entrance to the renowned Art Students League, where he fell under the influence of the leading members of the Ashcan School, including Robert Henri, John Sloan, and George Luks. In all, Thomason spent a decade in the city, adopting―and eventually adapting―the Ashcan movement's gritty realistic aesthetic into a distinctive regionalist style that utilized thick paint and simple subject matter.Eugene Thomason returned to the South in the early 1930s, living first in Charlotte, North