Greg M. THOMAS (Fellow)
Fields of study:
18th- and 19th-century European art and architecture
Artistic interactions between Europe and China
Representations of childhood and the family
Ecology and art
Profile:
Greg Thomas is Professor in the Department of Art History (formerly Fine Arts) at The University of Hong Kong.
He holds a B.A. in physics from Washington University in St. Louis, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in art history from Harvard University. After teaching at Purdue University 1995-99, he joined The University of Hong Kong, where he teaches modern European and American art and architecture, European interactions with Asia, and a popular introductory survey of western art. He also recently led the development of his department’s M.A. program in art history.
A specialist in 19th-century French painting, he has published Art and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century France: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau (Princeton University Press, 2000) and Impressionist Children: Childhood, Family, and Modern Identity in French Art (Yale University Press, 2010). Subsequent research has focused primarily on European interactions with China and Chinese culture in the 18th and 19th centuries, with notable articles on the imperial palace of Yuanming Yuan in Beijing, the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, and the Musée Chinois at the French palace of Fontainebleau. He is currently preparing a book on Sino-European artistic interactions at Yuanming Yuan.