Thompson was born at Middleboro, Massachussets, in 1809, a son of Cephas and Olive (Leonard) Thompson, and a descendant of John Thomson, a Welshman who emigrated to New England before 1623. He was a brother of Marietta and Jerome B. Thompson, both of whom attained celebrity as artists. The elder Cephas Thompson (1775 – 1856) was a self-taught portraitist whose permanent home was at Middleboro, but who was accustomed winters to make painting tours of the cities from New York to New Orleans.
Education
Among his famous sitters were John Marshall, Stephen Decatur, and David Ramsay. Taught and encouraged by his father, Cephas Giovanni at eighteen set up for himself at Plymouth.
Career
He drew from the antique at the Boston Athenaeum, and he made many portraits at Providence. In 1837 he took a studio at New York. There, a handsome little man, with engaging smile and good manners, he became a favorite in the literary and artistic coterie of which William Cullen Bryant, Fitz-Greene Halleck, and Henry T. Tuckerman were prominent figures.
For seven years Thompson painted portraits and copied old masters in Rome. His intimacy at this time with the Hawthorne family, also resident at Rome, is of familiar record.
He returned in 1859 to New York, where for many years he painted portraits, some of them quite elaborate family groups. He kept up his friendships with authors and through his sister-in-law, Anna Cora Ogden Mowatt, he had a large acquaintance with actors.
In 1887 the aged artist was appointed United States inspector of life preservers at New York, a post which he filled faithfully almost to the day of his death.
Achievements
Thompson's works have little value, though many of them are of historic importance as portraits of celebrities. Several of his portraits were acquired by the New York Historical Society; his likeness of Chancellor James M. Matthews, by the University of the City of New York (later New York University).
Membership
In 1861 he was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Nathaniel Hawthorne accorded him high praise as "earnest, faithful and religious in his worship of art", and it was Julian Hawthorne's opinion that no other artist in Rome "could paint as well as Mr. Thompson, " whose color, even though "he had never learned how to draw correctly redeemed all and made his pictures permanently valuable".
Connections
He married in December 1843 Mary Gouverneur Ogden, daughter of Samuel Gouverneur Ogden, a prominent New York merchant. They had two sons and a daughter.
Father:
Cephas Thompson
1775–1856
Mother:
Olivia Leonard Thompson
1780–1819
Son:
Hubert Ogden Thompson
1849–1886
Son:
Edmund Francis Thompson
1846–1880
Spouse :
Mary Gouverneur Ogden Thompson
1822–1895
Friend:
Nathaniel Hawthorne
He was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer.
