Maud Taber-Thomas

About the Artist

Maud Taber-Thomas is an artist who specializes in oil paintings and charcoal drawings. Trained in classical techniques at the New York Academy of Art, and with a background in English literature from Bowdoin College and Oxford University, where she studied abroad, Maud Taber-Thomas draws inspiration for her evocative portraits, interiors, and landscapes from the narratives and characters of classic literature. Her works, which range in scale from miniature to larger than life, capture the vibrant light and color of far-off places and distant time periods. Maud Taber-Thomas lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, and teaches at the National Gallery of Art and the Yellow Barn Studio at Glen Echo. Her drawings and paintings have been shown in galleries in the Washington, DC area and in New York City. In 2019, Maud Taber-Thomas was selected to spend two weeks in Greece as the artist in residence for the Paedeia Institute. She has been the recipient of a Terra Foundation residency in Giverny, France, a Summer Research Fellowship to study Pre-Raphaelites painting techniques and Victorian literature at Bowdoin College, and a Portrait Scholarship from the New York Academy of Art. Maud Taber-Thomas contributed thirty pen illustrations for the 2018 book Chance Particulars: A Writer’s Field Notebook, by Sara Mansfield Taber, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. She has received numerous commissions for institutional and family portraits. Her work is represented by Susan Calloway Fine Arts, in Washington, DC.

Artist's Statement

If music and sweet poetry agree, As they must needs, the sister and the brother, Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me, Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other.... -Richard Barnfield (1574-1620) This sonnet "If music and sweet poetry agree" by Elizabethan poet Richard Barnfield, highlights the harmonious bond between two seemingly separate art forms, music and poetry. In the spirit of this poem, I create paintings that transcend the boundaries of artistic disciplines, bringing together literature and visual art. The inspiration for my portraits comes from classic Victorian and early twentieth-century literature. I create sensitive portraits of the characters I find in these books, striving to evoke their complex inner lives. I experiment with historical painting techniques to conjure the vibrant light, mysterious shadows, and brilliant colors of far-off places and distant times. In my work, sweet poetry and fine arts agree.