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Alfred Henry Robinson Thornton

Born in Delhi, (his father was Chief Secretary to the Government of the Province), Thornton was educated in England. He graduated from Trinity College Cambridge and served in the Foreign Office between 1888 and 1889. Deciding to take up art, he attended the Slade School between 1888 and 1893, and afterwards studied under Fred Brown at the Westminster School of Art (1890-92). In 1890, Thornton visited Le Pouldu in Brittany with Arthur Studd and met Paul Gauguin. In 1895 he went on a painting trip to La Roche Guyon with another friend, Roger Fry. He was also associated with Sickert, as well as Charles Conder and D.S.MacColl. He became a member of the New English Art Club in 1895 (he was Honorary Secretary from 1928), and of the London Group in 1924.

After moving to the south-west of England, Thornton became President of the Cheltenham Art Club. A landscape painter, writer and lecturer, Thornton collected modern French paintings, and his aesthetic theories were published in the Burlington Magazine in 1921. Thornton's Diary of an Art Student of the Nineties was published the year before his death, and his memorial exhibition was held at the Redfern Gallery in 1939.