Thomas Brownell Eldred was an American Abstract Expressionist painter and printmaker. He attended Kalamazoo College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Students League of New York, and Atelier 17, studying under notable teachers like Guy Pène du Bois, Thomas Hart Benton, Stanley William Hayter, Louis Ritman, and John Vanderpoel. At the Art Students League, he developed a relationship with Benton, which influenced his formalist aesthetics in abstraction. Eldred taught printmaking at the Brooklyn Museum Art School from 1933 to 1938 under the Works Progress Administration (WPA), working alongside artists such as Ben Shahn, Mark Rothko, and Philip Guston.

In Brooklyn, Eldred met innovative printmaker Werner Drewes, a Bauhaus alumnus who influenced Eldred’s printmaking techniques. Eldred exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, The New School, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. His work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim, and the National Gallery of Art.

This colored gouache painting on thick paper was created during a period when the Guggenheim Museum was collecting Eldred's work. It reflects his eclectic style and excellent draftsmanship, characterized by bright colors and patterns influenced by his time as a naval wood pattern maker in the merchant marines.

Price on request.