Item NMC/1376 - Sketch for ceramic mural for St Augustine's R.C. School, Coatbridge

Painter, draughtsman, potter and teacher, born and lived in Glasgow. While at Allan Glen's School there aged 16 a rugby injury prompted leg amputation, always to cause pain and inconvenience. During World War II served as a dispatch rider - he was obsessed by motorcycles - in 1941 going to Glasgow School of Art to study drawing and painting under Hugh Adam Crawford. While teaching in the High School, Thomson, a fine potter who erected his own kiln at home, taught pottery in the evening at the School of Art. He created large pottery murals for Lanarkshire schools. Thomson also arranged art classes in his home, which brought together students such as Joan Eardley, Margot Sandeman and his first wife Florence, a painter. One of his pottery students, Barbara, became his second wife. Thomson was a well-liked teacher of drawing and painting at the School of Art from 1960 until ill-health prompted his retirement in 1975. He was elected associate of RSA in 1952, four years after winning the Guthrie Award, was a member of RSA and showed regularly at Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts. For many years he painted in the summer at his cottage at Ballantrae, Strathclyde, where he died. Blythswood Gallery, Glasgow, held a show in 1989. Abbot Hall Art Gallery and Museum, Kendal, holds his drawing of Joan Eardley.