For information about commissioning a portrait, please contact the artist at m.taber.thomas@gmail.com.
AVAILABLE WORKS
Please contact the artist at m.taber.thomas@gmail.com for information on availability and pricing. Additional artworks can be found at Susan Calloway Fine Arts.
Elizabeth Bennett: Pride and Prejudice
Oil on Canvas, 30 x 40”, 2016
Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry; but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody; and Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her.
-Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Flora Poste
2016, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 40″
Flora inherited, however, from her father a strong will and from her mother a slender ankle. The one had not been impaired by always having her own way nor the other by the violent athletic sports in which she had been compelled to take part, but she realized that neither was adequate as an equipment for earning her keep.
-Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm
Summer
Summer, 2016, Oil on Panel, 12 x 16
Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow,
Swift as the swallow along the river’s light
Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,
Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.
-George Meredith, ‘Love in the Valley’
The Tempest: “Where the bee sucks, there suck I”
Oil on Panel, 12 x 12”, 2016
Where the bee sucks. there suck I:
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
-William Shakespeare, The Tempest
The Weird Sisters
Charcoal on Arches, 44.5 x 60″, 2018
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
–Macbeth, William Shakespeare
Fanfare in Purple and Gold
Art is a goddess of dainty thought, reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others. She is, withal selfishly occupied with her own perfection only – having no desire to teach.
-James Abbott McNeill Whistler, ‘Ten O’Clock Lecture’
Lady Slane: All Passion Spent
Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48”, 2016
Sitting there in the sun at Hampstead, in the late summer, under the south wall and the ripened peaches, doing nothing with her hands, she remembered the day she had become engaged to Henry. She had plenty of leisure now, day in, day out, to survey her life as a tract of country traversed, ….And what, precisely, had been herself, she wondered—an old woman looking back on the girl she had once been? This wondering was the softest, most wistful, of occupations; yet it was not melancholy; it was, rather, the last, supreme luxury; a luxury she had waited all her life to indulge. There was just time, in this reprieve before death, to indulge herself to the full. She had, after all, nothing else to do. For the first time in all her life—no, for the first time since her marriage—she had nothing else to do. She could lie back against death and examine life. Meanwhile, the air was full of the sound of bees.
-Vita Sackville-West, All Passion Spent
Lawrence Seldon: House of Mirth
Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48, 2016
He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was standing, and she continued to question him…
‘Don’t you ever mind,’ she asked suddenly, ‘not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?’
He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture and shabby walls.
‘Don’t I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?’
‘And having to work—do you mind that?’
‘Oh, the work itself is not so bad—I’m rather fond of the law.’
‘No; but the being tied down: the routine—don’t you ever want to get away, to see new places and people?’
‘Horribly—especially when I see all my friends rushing to the steamer.’
She drew a sympathetic breath. ‘But do you mind enough—to marry to get out of it?’
Selden broke into a laugh. ‘God forbid!’ he declared.
-Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
Athena
Athena, 2016, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48
O, warlike Pallas…
Gymnastic virgin of terrific mind,
Dire Gorgon’s bane, unmarried, blessed, kind:
Mother of arts, impetuous; understood,
Rage to the wicked, wisdom to the good:
Female and male, the arts of war are thine…
Hear me, O Goddess, when to thee I pray,
With supplicating voice both night and day,
And in my latest hour, give peace and health,
Propitious times, and necessary wealth,
And, ever present, be thy votaries aid,
O, much implored, art’s parent, blue-eyed maid.
-Orphic Hymn to Athena

Literary Portraits
Queen of Snow, 2016, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 60″
The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.
-Emily Bronte, ‘The Night is Darkening Around Me’
Summer, 2016, Oil on Panel, 12 x 16
Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow,
Swift as the swallow along the river’s light
Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,
Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.
-George Meredith, ‘Love in the Valley’
Jane Eyre, 2016, Oil on Panel, 16 x 20
‘Were you happy when you painted these pictures?’ asked Mr.Rochester presently.
‘I was absorbed, sir: yes, and I was happy. To paint them, in short, was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known.’
‘That is not saying much. Your pleasures, by your own account, have been few; but I daresay you did exist in a kind of artist’s dreamland while you blent and arranged these strange tints.
-Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Afternoon Tea, 2016, Oil on Panel, 8 x 10
Gwendolen. I had no idea there were any flowers in the country.
Cecily. Oh, flowers are as common here, Miss Fairfax, as people are in London.
-Oscar Wilde, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’
Jack and Algernon Eating Muffins, 2016, Oil on Panel, 16 x 12
Jack. How can you sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.
Algernon. Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.
Jack. I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.
Algernon. When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as any one who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins.
-Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Milly: Wings of the Dove, 2016, Oil on Panel, 18 x 24
‘Everything suits her so—especially her pearls. They go so with her old lace. I’ll trouble you really to look at them.’ Densher, though aware he had seen them before, had perhaps not ‘really’ looked at them, and had thus not done justice to the embodied poetry…. ‘She’s a dove,’ Kate went on, ‘and one somehow doesn’t think of doves as bejeweled. Yet they suit her down to the ground.’
-Henry James, The Wings of the Dove
Miranda, 2016, Oil on Canvas, 22 x 30
Miranda. Sweet lord, you play me false.
-William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Tempest Chess Game, 2016, Charcoal on Arches, 20 x 30
The Tempest: ‘Where the bee sucks, there suck I,’ 2016
Oil on Panel, 12 x 12
Where the bee sucks. there suck I:
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
-William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Athena, 2016, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48
O, warlike Pallas…
Gymnastic virgin of terrific mind,
Dire Gorgon’s bane, unmarried, blessed, kind:
Mother of arts, impetuous; understood,
Rage to the wicked, wisdom to the good:
Female and male, the arts of war are thine…
Hear me, O Goddess, when to thee I pray,
With supplicating voice both night and day,
And in my latest hour, give peace and health,
Propitious times, and necessary wealth,
And, ever present, be thy votaries aid,
O, much implored, art’s parent, blue-eyed maid.
-Orphic Hymn to Athena
Flora Poste, 2016, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 40
Flora inherited, however, from her father a strong will and from her mother a slender ankle. The one had not been impaired by always having her own way nor the other by the violent athletic sports in which she had been compelled to take part, but she realized that neither was adequate as an equipment for earning her keep.
-Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm
Lawrence Seldon: House of Mirth, 2016, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48
He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was standing, and she continued to question him…
‘Don’t you ever mind,’ she asked suddenly, ‘not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?’
He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture and shabby walls.
‘Don’t I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?’
‘And having to work—do you mind that?’
‘Oh, the work itself is not so bad—I’m rather fond of the law.’
‘No; but the being tied down: the routine—don’t you ever want to get away, to see new places and people?’
‘Horribly—especially when I see all my friends rushing to the steamer.’
She drew a sympathetic breath. ‘But do you mind enough—to marry to get out of it?’
Selden broke into a laugh. ‘God forbid!’ he declared.
-Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
Elizabeth Bennet: Pride and Prejudice, 2016, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 40
Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry; but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody; and Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her.
-Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Lady Slane: All Passion Spent, 2016, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48
Sitting there in the sun at Hampstead, in the late summer, under the south wall and the ripened peaches, doing nothing with her hands, she remembered the day she had become engaged to Henry. She had plenty of leisure now, day in, day out, to survey her life as a tract of country traversed, ….And what, precisely, had been herself, she wondered—an old woman looking back on the girl she had once been? This wondering was the softest, most wistful, of occupations; yet it was not melancholy; it was, rather, the last, supreme luxury; a luxury she had waited all her life to indulge. There was just time, in this reprieve before death, to indulge herself to the full. She had, after all, nothing else to do. For the first time in all her life—no, for the first time since her marriage—she had nothing else to do. She could lie back against death and examine life. Meanwhile, the air was full of the sound of bees.
-Vita Sackville-West, All Passion Spent
Fanfare in Purple and Gold, 2015, Oil on Canvas, 24 x 30
Art is a goddess of dainty thought, reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others. She is, withal selfishly occupied with her own perfection only – having no desire to teach.
-James Abbott McNeill Whistler, ‘Ten O’Clock Lecture’

Maud began doing “Metrocard Paintings” when she was living in New York City in 2011. These miniature works are all painted in oil on the backs of New York City Metrocards, which accounts for the distinctive shape and hole in one side.

Martha Cutts
Head of School, Washington Latin Public Charter School, Washington, DC.
Oil on Canvas, 30 x 40″, 2019

Judge Thomas Stark
On display in the Suffolk County Supreme Court Building in Riverhead, NY.
Oil on Canvas, 24×36″, 2017

Flora Poste
2016, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 40″
Flora inherited, however, from her father a strong will and from her mother a slender ankle. The one had not been impaired by always having her own way nor the other by the violent athletic sports in which she had been compelled to take part, but she realized that neither was adequate as an equipment for earning her keep.
-Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm

The Tempest: ‘Where the bee sucks, there suck I,’
Oil on Panel, 12 x 12”, 2016
Where the bee sucks. there suck I:
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
-William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Fanfare in Purple and Gold
Art is a goddess of dainty thought, reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others. She is, withal selfishly occupied with her own perfection only – having no desire to teach.
-James Abbott McNeill Whistler, ‘Ten O’Clock Lecture’

Lady Slane: All Passion Spent
Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48”, 2016
Sitting there in the sun at Hampstead, in the late summer, under the south wall and the ripened peaches, doing nothing with her hands, she remembered the day she had become engaged to Henry. She had plenty of leisure now, day in, day out, to survey her life as a tract of country traversed, ….And what, precisely, had been herself, she wondered—an old woman looking back on the girl she had once been? This wondering was the softest, most wistful, of occupations; yet it was not melancholy; it was, rather, the last, supreme luxury; a luxury she had waited all her life to indulge. There was just time, in this reprieve before death, to indulge herself to the full. She had, after all, nothing else to do. For the first time in all her life—no, for the first time since her marriage—she had nothing else to do. She could lie back against death and examine life. Meanwhile, the air was full of the sound of bees.
-Vita Sackville-West, All Passion Spent

Lawrence Seldon: House of Mirth
Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48, 2016
He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was standing, and she continued to question him…
‘Don’t you ever mind,’ she asked suddenly, ‘not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?’
He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture and shabby walls.
‘Don’t I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?’
‘And having to work—do you mind that?’
‘Oh, the work itself is not so bad—I’m rather fond of the law.’
‘No; but the being tied down: the routine—don’t you ever want to get away, to see new places and people?’
‘Horribly—especially when I see all my friends rushing to the steamer.’
She drew a sympathetic breath. ‘But do you mind enough—to marry to get out of it?’
Selden broke into a laugh. ‘God forbid!’ he declared.
-Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

Athena
Athena, 2016, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48
O, warlike Pallas…
Gymnastic virgin of terrific mind,
Dire Gorgon’s bane, unmarried, blessed, kind:
Mother of arts, impetuous; understood,
Rage to the wicked, wisdom to the good:
Female and male, the arts of war are thine…
Hear me, O Goddess, when to thee I pray,
With supplicating voice both night and day,
And in my latest hour, give peace and health,
Propitious times, and necessary wealth,
And, ever present, be thy votaries aid,
O, much implored, art’s parent, blue-eyed maid.
-Orphic Hymn to Athena

The Weird Sisters
Charcoal on Arches, 44.5 x 60″, 2018
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
–Macbeth, William Shakespeare

Owls
These giant drawings of owls are all approximately 4 feet wide and 5-8 feet tall.
Charcoal on Arches
Installation at Saint Albans School, Washington, DC.

Plein Air Paintings
These are all done in oil on prepared paper, approximately 4 x 6″.
Ruskin’s View in the Lake District
Lake District Hillside
Lake District Pasture
View from Ruskin’s House in the Lake District
Rainstorm Arnisdale Scotland
Loch Hourn Scotland
Hills Across Loch Hourn Scotland
Arnisdale Cottage Scotland
Franciscan Church Salzburg
Hohensalzburg Fortress Salzburg
Stift Nonberg Abbey Salzberg
Monzee Lake Austria
Vanalhaven Maine Rocks

Lucas as a Fop
2011, Oil on Canvas, 44 x 96”
Look upward where the white gull screams, What does it see that we do not see? Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams On some outward voyaging argosy,– Ah! can it be We have lived our lives in a land of dreams! How sad it seems.-Oscar Wilde, Her Voice
Lura: Art for Art’s Sake
2012, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 36″
Jane Eyre: “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me”
2017, Oil on Panel, 16 x 20″
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.
-Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Come into the Garden, Maud
2013, oil on panel, 20 x 16”
Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the rose is blown.
For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
In a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.
-Tennyson, Maud: A Monodrama
Naomi: Born to Strange Sights
2014, oil on canvas, 36 x 48”
If thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see…
-John Donne, Song: Go and catch a falling star
An Artful Place
2014, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48”
The taxi drew up at a wonderful shop—the sort of shop I would never dare to walk through without a reason. We went in by way of the glove and stocking department, but there were things from other departments just dotted about; bottles of scent and a little glass tree with cherries on it and a piece of white branched coral on a sea-green chiffon scarf. Oh, it was an artful place—it must make people who have money want to spend it madly!
The pale grey carpets were as springy as moss and the air was scented; it smelled a bit like bluebells but richer, deeper.
“What does it smell of, exactly?” I said. And Rose said:
“Heaven.”
-Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Cellist
2013, charcoal on arches, 44.5 x 80”
‘T is you that are the music, not your song.
The song is but a door which, opening wide,
Lets forth the pent-up melody inside,
Your spirit’s harmony, which clear and strong
Sings but of you. Throughout your whole life long
Your songs, your thoughts, your doings, each divide
This perfect beauty; waves within a tide,
Or single notes amid a glorious throng.
-Amy Lowell, Listening
Emily Tennyson
2014, oil on panel, 16 x 20”
O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove
That sittest ranging golden hair;
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!
For now her father’s chimney glows
In expectation of a guest;
And thinking “this will please him best,”
She takes a riband or a rose;
For he will see them on to-night;
And with the thought her colour burns;
And, having left the glass, she turns
Once more to set a ringlet right;
And, even when she turn’d, the curse
Had fallen, and her future Lord
Was drown’d in passing thro’ the ford,
Or kill’d in falling from his horse.
-Tennyson, In Memoriam
Forrest Fop II
2013, oil on canvas, 36 x 48”
Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed
On my boy’s heart, yet have I burst the bars,
Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed
The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!
-Oscar Wilde, Apologia
Orlando: Eyes like Drenched Violets
2010, oil on panel, 9 x 12”
Directly we glance at Orlando standing by the window, we must admit that he had eyes like drenched violets, so large that the water seemed to have brimmed in them and widened them; and a brow like the swelling of a marble dome pressed between the two blank medallions which were his temples. Directly we glance at eyes and forehead, thus do we rhapsodize.
–Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Orlando: Sitting Still in a Chair and Thinking
2011, oil on canvas, 64 x 64”
What can the biographer do when his subject has put him in the predicament in which Orlando has now put us? Life, it has been agreed by everyone whose opinion is worth consulting, is the only fit subject for novelist or biographer; life, the same authorities have decided, has nothing whatever to do with sitting still in a chair and thinking. Thought and life are as the poles asunder. Therefore—since sitting in a chair and thinking is precisely what Orlando is doing now—there is nothing for it but to recite the calendar, tell one’s beads, blow one’s nose, stir the fire, look out of the window, until she has done. Orlando sat so still that you could have heard a pin drop. Would, indeed, that a pin had dropped! That would have been life of a kind.
-Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Reading the Rubaiyat: Study

Book Illustrations: Chance Particulars
In 2018, Maud Taber-Thomas contributed thirty pen and ink illustrations for the book Chance Particulars: A Writer’s Field Notebook for Travelers, Bloggers, Essayists, Memoirists, Novelists, Journalists, Adventurers, Naturalists, Sketchers, and Other Note-Takers and Recorders of Life, by Sara Mansfield Taber, published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

2016 Exhibition: Thinkers and Dreamers
For her 2016 show at Susan Calloway Fine Arts, Maud created artworks inspired by such authors as Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Henry James, Stella Gibbons, Charlotte Bronte, Vita Sackville-West, and Oscar Wilde. Her works particularly feature strong women from literature.
In addition to the portraits, please scroll down to see a selection of plein air paintings from Maud’s travels in France, England, and Italy that were included, as well as a series of miniature paintings on the backs of New York City Metrocards.

News and Events
Maud Taber-Thomas’s 2016 artist talk, in which she discusses literature, Renaissance music, and how they relate to her paintings, is now available to watch on Youtube.

I am happy to announce that my charcoal drawing “Tempest Chess Game” was awarded 2nd place in the show Poe and Puck, an exhibition of artworks inspired by Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe at the Mansion at Strathmore in Bethesda, MD!
The show runs from January 13th through March 4th, 2018.
My painting “Summer” is also featured in the exhibition.

Damsel with a Dulcimer
2009, Oil on Panel, 8 x 10″
A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora.-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

Dorian Gray I
2008, Oil on Panel, 8 x 10″
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
–Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Isabel Archer: Portrait of a Lady
2014, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48”
“Well,” said Henrietta, “you think you can lead a romantic life, that you can live by pleasing yourself and pleasing others. You’ll find you’re mistaken. Whatever life you lead you must put
your soul in it–to make any sort of success of it; and from the moment you do that it ceases to be romance, I assure you: it becomes grim reality! And you can’t always please yourself; you must sometimes please other people. That, I admit, you’re very ready to do; but there’s another thing that’s still more important–you must often displease others. You must always be ready for that–you must never shrink from it. That doesn’t suit you at all–you’re too fond of admiration, you like to be thought well of. You think we can escape disagreeable duties by taking romantic views–that’s your great illusion, my dear. But we can’t. You must be prepared on many occasions in life to please no one at all–not even yourself.”
—Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

Jane Eyre
2016, Oil on Panel, 16 x 20″
‘Were you happy when you painted these pictures?’ asked Mr.Rochester presently.
‘I was absorbed, sir: yes, and I was happy. To paint them, in short, was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known.’
‘That is not saying much. Your pleasures, by your own account, have been few; but I daresay you did exist in a kind of artist’s dreamland while you blent and arranged these strange tints.
-Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Elizabeth Bennett: Pride and Prejudice
2016, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 40″
Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry; but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody; and Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her.
-Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

An Artful Place
2014, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48”
The taxi drew up at a wonderful shop—the sort of shop I would never dare to walk through without a reason. We went in by way of the glove and stocking department, but there were things from other departments just dotted about; bottles of scent and a little glass tree with cherries on it and a piece of white branched coral on a sea-green chiffon scarf. Oh, it was an artful place—it must make people who have money want to spend it madly!
The pale grey carpets were as springy as moss and the air was scented; it smelled a bit like bluebells but richer, deeper.
“What does it smell of, exactly?” I said. And Rose said:
“Heaven.”
-Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

Orlando: “Sitting still in a chair and thinking”
2011, Oil on Canvas, 64 x 64”
What can the biographer do when his subject has put him in the predicament in which Orlando has now put us? Life, it has been agreed by everyone whose opinion is worth consulting, is the only fit subject for novelist or biographer; life, the same authorities have decided, has nothing whatever to do with sitting still in a chair and thinking. Thought and life are as the poles asunder. Therefore—since sitting in a chair and thinking is precisely what Orlando is doing now—there is nothing for it but to recite the calendar, tell one’s beads, blow one’s nose, stir the fire, look out of the window, until she has done. Orlando sat so still that you could have heard a pin drop. Would, indeed, that a pin had dropped! That would have been life of a kind.
-Virginia Woolf, Orlando

Summer
2016, Oil on Panel, 12 x 16″
Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow,
Swift as the swallow along the river’s light
Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,
Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.
-George Meredith, Love in the Valley

Queen of Snow
2016, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 60″
The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow; But a tyrant spell has bound me, And I cannot, cannot go.-Emily Bronte, The Night is Darkening Round Me

Lucas as a Fop
2011, Oil on Canvas, 44 x 96”
Look upward where the white gull screams, What does it see that we do not see? Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams On some outward voyaging argosy,– Ah! can it be We have lived our lives in a land of dreams! How sad it seems.-Oscar Wilde, Her Voice

Miranda: The Tempest
2016, Oil on Canvas, 22 x 30″
Miranda. Sweet lord, you play me false.
-William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Milly: Wings of the Dove
2016, Oil on Panel, 18 x 24″
‘Everything suits her so—especially her pearls. They go so with her old lace. I’ll trouble you really to look at them.’ Densher, though aware he had seen them before, had perhaps not ‘really’ looked at them, and had thus not done justice to the embodied poetry…. ‘She’s a dove,’ Kate went on, ‘and one somehow doesn’t think of doves as bejeweled. Yet they suit her down to the ground.’
-Henry James, The Wings of the Dove

Self-Portrait: Aestheticism
2012, Oil on Panel, 16 x 16”
To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
-Walter Pater, The Renaissance

Jane Eyre: “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me”
2017, Oil on Panel, 16 x 20″
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.
-Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Plein Air Paintings

View of the Louvre from the Tuilleries, Paris, Oil on Paper, 4.5 x 6

Ferris Wheel in the Tuilleries, Paris, Oil on Paper, 4.5 x 6

Lion and Diana Statues and the Luxembourg Garden, Paris, Oil on Paper, 4.5 x 6

Statues in the Tuilleries Garden, Paris, Oil on Paper, 4.5 x 6

Palace, Luxembourg Garden, Paris, Oil on Paper, 4.5 x 6

Luxembourg Garden, Paris, Oil on Paper, 4.5 x 6

Connemara I, Oil on Paper, 9 x 6

Connemara II, Oil on Paper, 9×7.25

Connemara III, Oil on Paper, 9 x 6

Connemara IV, Oil on Paper, 9 x 5.25

Connemara V, Oil on Paper, 9 x 5.25

Clifden Castle, Connemara, Oil on Paper, 9 x 4.75

Connemara VI, Oil on Paper, 9 x 5.75

Connemara VII, Oil on Paper, 9 x 4.5

Connemara VIII, Oil on Paper, 9 x 6.75

Grazing Sheep in Yorkshire, Oil on Paper, 4.5 x 6

Sligo Creek Autumn Foliage, Oil on Paper, 4.5 x 6

Sligo Creek, Oil on Paper, 4.5 x 6

Piazza Signoria, Florence, Oil on Paper, 4.5 x 6

View of the Duomo, Florence, Oil on Paper, 5.75 x 6.75

Metrocard Paintings
These miniature works are all painted in oil on the backs of New York City Metrocards, which is why they have the distinctive shape with one cut corner and a hole in one side. They are all 2-1/8 x 3-1/4 inches, and they were all painted in 2016.

The Light that she Loves
Maud Taber-Thomas’s 2014 show at Susan Calloway Fine art in Washington, DC took its name from a line from the Tennyson Poem Maud: A Monodrama. The show featured fourteen large portrait paintings and one charcoal drawing, which were all inspired by literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The artworks were displayed with quotations from the books and poems that inspired them.

Come into the Garden, Maud
2013, oil on panel, 20 x 16”
Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the rose is blown.
For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
In a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.
-Tennyson, Maud: A Monodrama

Isabel Archer: Portrait of a Lady
2014, oil on canvas, 36 x 48”
“Well,” said Henrietta, “you think you can lead a romantic life, that you can live by pleasing yourself and pleasing others. You’ll find you’re mistaken. Whatever life you lead you must put
your soul in it–to make any sort of success of it; and from the moment you do that it ceases to be romance, I assure you: it becomes grim reality! And you can’t always please yourself; you must sometimes please other people. That, I admit, you’re very ready to do; but there’s another thing that’s still more important–you must often displease others. You must always be ready for that–you must never shrink from it. That doesn’t suit you at all–you’re too fond of admiration, you like to be thought well of. You think we can escape disagreeable duties by taking romantic views–that’s your great illusion, my dear. But we can’t. You must be prepared on many occasions in life to please no one at all–not even yourself.”
—Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

Self-Portrait: Aestheticism
2012, oil on panel, 16 x 16”
To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
-Walter Pater, The Renaissance

Lucas as a Fop
2011, oil on canvas, 44 x 96”
Look upward where the white gull screams,
What does it see that we do not see?
Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
On some outward voyaging argosy,–
Ah! can it be
We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!
How sad it seems.
-Oscar Wilde, Her Voice

Damsel with a Dulcimer II
2013, oil on panel, 11 x 14”
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

Naomi: Born to Strange Sights
2014, oil on canvas, 36 x 48”
If thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see…
-John Donne, Song: Go and catch a falling star

An Artful Place
2014, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48”
The taxi drew up at a wonderful shop—the sort of shop I would never dare to walk through without a reason. We went in by way of the glove and stocking department, but there were things from other departments just dotted about; bottles of scent and a little glass tree with cherries on it and a piece of white branched coral on a sea-green chiffon scarf. Oh, it was an artful place—it must make people who have money want to spend it madly!
The pale grey carpets were as springy as moss and the air was scented; it smelled a bit like bluebells but richer, deeper.
“What does it smell of, exactly?” I said. And Rose said:
“Heaven.”
-Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

Cellist
2013, charcoal on arches, 44.5 x 80”
‘T is you that are the music, not your song.
The song is but a door which, opening wide,
Lets forth the pent-up melody inside,
Your spirit’s harmony, which clear and strong
Sings but of you. Throughout your whole life long
Your songs, your thoughts, your doings, each divide
This perfect beauty; waves within a tide,
Or single notes amid a glorious throng.
-Amy Lowell, Listening

Emily Tennyson
2014, oil on panel, 16 x 20”
O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove
That sittest ranging golden hair;
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!
For now her father’s chimney glows
In expectation of a guest;
And thinking “this will please him best,”
She takes a riband or a rose;
For he will see them on to-night;
And with the thought her colour burns;
And, having left the glass, she turns
Once more to set a ringlet right;
And, even when she turn’d, the curse
Had fallen, and her future Lord
Was drown’d in passing thro’ the ford,
Or kill’d in falling from his horse.
-Tennyson, In Memoriam

Forrest Fop II
2013, oil on canvas, 36 x 48”
Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed
On my boy’s heart, yet have I burst the bars,
Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed
The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!
-Oscar Wilde, Apologia

Orlando: Eyes like Drenched Violets
2010, oil on panel, 9 x 12”
Directly we glance at Orlando standing by the window, we must admit that he had eyes like drenched violets, so large that the water seemed to have brimmed in them and widened them; and a brow like the swelling of a marble dome pressed between the two blank medallions which were his temples. Directly we glance at eyes and forehead, thus do we rhapsodize.
–Virginia Woolf, Orlando

Orlando: Sitting Still in a Chair and Thinking
2011, oil on canvas, 64 x 64”
What can the biographer do when his subject has put him in the predicament in which Orlando has now put us? Life, it has been agreed by everyone whose opinion is worth consulting, is the only fit subject for novelist or biographer; life, the same authorities have decided, has nothing whatever to do with sitting still in a chair and thinking. Thought and life are as the poles asunder. Therefore—since sitting in a chair and thinking is precisely what Orlando is doing now—there is nothing for it but to recite the calendar, tell one’s beads, blow one’s nose, stir the fire, look out of the window, until she has done. Orlando sat so still that you could have heard a pin drop. Would, indeed, that a pin had dropped! That would have been life of a kind.
-Virginia Woolf, Orlando

Reading the Rubaiyat: Study
2013, oil on panel, 14 x 11”
Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say;
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?
-Edward FitzGerald, trans., The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Abby with her Violin
2009, oil on panel, 11 x 14”
All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr’d
To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson, Maud: A Monodrama

Isabel Archer Study
2014, Oil on Panel, 12 x 16”
“…and the great advantage of being a literary woman, was that you could go everywhere and do everything.”

Biography and Contact Information
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 in the Drawing Salon program at the National Gallery of Art and at the Yellow Barn Studio at Glen Echo. Her drawings and paintings have been shown at a number of galleries in the Washington, DC area and in New York City. She has been the recipient of a Terra Foundation residency in Giverny, France, a Summer Research Fellowship to study the Pre-Raphaelites at Bowdoin College, a Portrait Scholarship from the New York Academy of Art, and a residency in Greece with the Paedeia Institute. In 2019 she was awarded an Individual Artist Grant from the Maryland State Arts Council.
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 completed many official and family portrait commissions. Her work is represented by Susan Calloway Fine Arts, in Washington, DC.
For questions about purchasing or commissioning artwork, please contact Maud at
m.taber.thomas@gmail.com
photo by Xueli Zheng

Artist Statement: If music and sweet poetry agree
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….
One god is god of both, as poets feign;
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.
-Richard Barnfield (1574-1620)
Elizabethan poet Richard Barnfield’s sonnet “If music and sweet poetry agree,” highlights the harmonious bond between two seemingly separate art forms, music and poetry. In the spirit of the poem, artist Maud Taber-Thomas creates luminous drawings and paintings that embody a loving conversation between several different art forms. A passionate scholar of classic literature, an avid classical musician, and an enthusiast of past time periods, Maud Taber-Thomas interweaves all of these interests into her artwork. Her paintings tell the stories that she discovers in Victorian and Medieval literature, capture the vibrant light and color of far-off places and distant times, and weave together symbols in compositions reminiscent of polyphonic music.
Trained in academic painting techniques, Maud Taber-Thomas’s artistic process is strongly tied to the methods employed by artists from past generations, from the Renaissance Tenebrists, to the French Rococo painters, to the Pre-Raphaelites and the Impressionist portraitists. Working in miniature, on a larger than life scale, and every size in between, Maud Taber-Thomas endows all of her works with a sense of the fleeting nature of light, a celebration of color, and a sympathetic and tranquil sense of peace and thoughtfulness. Many of her works feature sensitive portraits that evoke the complex inner life of her subjects, hinting at stories that transcend the single moment that can be depicted in a visual artwork. Maud Taber-Thomas’s drawings and paintings exist within a peaceful conversation between the many art forms that she loves. In her work, music, sweet poetry—and the fine arts—agree.
