Artist
Centurion, 1915–1956
Born 20 August 1868 in San Augustine, Texas
Died 1 March 1956 in La Crescenta, California
Buried Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale)
, Glendale, California
Proposed by James Carroll Beckwith and Ben Foster
Elected 5 June 1915 at age forty-six
Century Memorial
Seymour Thomas was born in Texas in 1868, and got most of his formal education at the Art Students League and the Académie Julien in Paris, where he came to be a pupil of Jules Lefebvre. He also studied under Benjamin Constant.
He was a portrait painter, and a very good one. He painted the portraits of Woodrow Wilson which hang in the White House and in the State House at Trenton, of Lord Bryce in the National Liberal Club in London, of Francis Lynde Stetson in the Bar Association in New York, and two score portraits of other distinguished men and women. In his heyday he was the most sought-after portrait painter in America.
He was elected to the Century in 1915, but about that time he took up permanent residence in California, so he never became a familiar figure in the Club. He was small in stature and precise in speech, with an orderly mind and pleasant, friendly manners. He was Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and in 1914 Williams gave him an honorary degree.
He spent his life doing what he wanted most to do; and he did it so well as to excite the admiration of people he cared about. This is truly a happy dispensation.
George W. Martin
1957 Century Association Yearbook