Thomas Chimes
American artist (1921–2009)
Thomas Chimes (1921–2009) was a painter and artist from Philadelphia. His work is in important public collections, including those of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, FL, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, among others.
Background
Thomas James Chimes was born to Greek immigrant parents in Philadelphia in 1921. In 1939 he became enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. His studies were interrupted by the US involvement in World War 2, in which he joined the US Air Force. After World War 2, Thomas began studying again, in New York: philosophy at Columbia University and painting and sculpture at Art Students League. While there he painted several portraits that fell in line with the New York trends of the time. However, he decided to move back to Philadelphia in 1953 and became a fellow of the National Endowment of the Arts and established his studio there. In Philadelphia, he would develop his own, more personal style.
Stylistic development
Throughout the decades Chimes would continue to reinvent his style with four major periods of work.
“Thomas Chimes” enters the record as american artist (1921–2009). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Thomas, Chimes and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15434488. VIAF identifies the subject as 28251903. The Library of Congress control number is n93017063. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921, 2009, 1939 and 1953.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas Chimes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.