TOMLIN, BRADLEY WALKER

born Aug. 19, 1899, Syracuse, N.Y., U.S. died May 11, 1953, New York City American painter whose paintings introduced an elegiac tone to post-World War II abstract art. Following an independent path between improvisational freedom and premeditated control, he produced in the last five years of his life a body of works notable for its great originality and depth of feeling. During most of his career, Tomlin painted lyrical Cubist still lifes while teaching at Sarah Lawrence College and assorted boys' schools. In the mid-1940s, he fell under the influence of the Abstract Expressionist painter Adolph Gottlieb. Experimenting with the semiautomatic methods used by many Abstract Expressionists, he created graceful works, such as Tension by Moonlight (1948), that reflect his interest in Japanese calligraphy. He soon regarded his newly found aesthetic freedom with suspicion and began to paint such pieces as Number 9: In Praise of Gertrude Stein (1950; Museum of Modern Art, New York City) in which calligraphic and typographic shapes form a floating, but controlled, network over the entire surface of the canvas. During the three remaining years of his life, he continued to produce paintings in subtle variations of this style, imbuing all his works with a distinctive melancholy.