The Judgement
Bob Thompson
Contemporary Art
The career of Bob Thompson, the noted African American artist, was cut short by his early death at the age of twenty-eight. Thompson was born near Louisville, Kentucky, and studied at the University of Louisville and at Boston University. In the early and mid-1960s, he traveled throughout Europe and experienced many Renaissance paintings and other artworks firsthand. He fused the vigor and vibrancy of Expressionism with themes from Old Master compositions and the vivid palette of Fauve painting to create the original visual vocabulary exemplified by The Judgment. Recalling such time-honored Old Master subjects as the Last Judgment and the Judgment of Paris, here a nude male trio sits before faceless winged female angels while two figures (at left) await judgment. The planar, flattened figures and compositional contours in a gesturally applied background are all equally emphasized.
MEDIUM
Oil on canvas
DATES
1963
DIMENSIONS
60 x 84in. (152.4 x 213.4cm)
frame: 60 3/4 x 84 5/8 x 2 in. (154.3 x 214.9 x 5.1 cm) (show scale)
SIGNATURE
Lower left: "B Thompson '63"
COLLECTIONS
Contemporary Art
ACCESSION NUMBER
81.214
CREDIT LINE
A. Augustus Healy Fund
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
CAPTION
Bob Thompson (American, 1937–1966). The Judgement, 1963. Oil on canvas, 60 x 84in. (152.4 x 213.4cm). Brooklyn Museum, A. Augustus Healy Fund, 81.214. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 81.214_PS20.jpg)
IMAGE
overall, 81.214_PS20.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2023
"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
RIGHTS STATEMENT
© Estate of Bob Thompson, Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY
The Brooklyn Museum holds a non-exclusive license to reproduce images of this work of art from the rights holder named here.
The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act.
For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch.
For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright.
If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
If you wish to contact the rights holder for this work, please email copyright@brooklynmuseum.org and we will assist if we can.
RECORD COMPLETENESS
Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and we welcome any additional information you might have.
