The Fine Art of Alan Wood-Thomas: Biography

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Alan Wood-Thomas was born on Jan. 12, 1920 in Paris, into a family of artists. His father, Cyrus W. Thomas, was an architect studying at the Beaux Arts School. His mother, Victoria Marie Ange Dauriac, was a French sculptress, who at the age of sixteen, was the youngest person ever to have been allowed into the Beaux Arts School. Living in Paris Alan spent most of his free time mountain climbing. He joined the French Boy Scouts and through time became an eagle scout, as well as first in his class. As a teenager, he studied architecture with his father and sculpting with his mother. Much of his canvas work has a sculpting feel to it, where the images actually protrude from the piece.

Alan and his family later moved to America, where Alan attended college to become an architect like his father. He was admitted to start his third year of school at Princeton but instead took the big plunge and moved to New York City where he met his wife Annabelle, who was modeling at an art school. To make money, he worked running the elevators at Radio City Music Hall. Each night he would draw his wife Annabelle at home for hours. He was determined not to consider himself an artist until he had mastered the human form.

When WWII began, Alan joined the 603d division, which was mainly comprised of art minded young men. The camouflage division as they called it, was an important factor in winning the war against the Nazi’s, and in a book entitled 'Secret Soldiers', written by Philip Gerard, many of Alan's accomplishments during the war can be found.

Alan was a master artist but a poor businessman. After the war in 1972, he tried walking the streets of Paris to sell his artwork to gallerys for a short time. Finding rejection hard, he went back to America and continued to do what he loved most, drawing, etching, and painting.

He colored old engravings with watercolors to make a mere $5 an hour. Occasionally a friend would come by his house in Connecticut, go out to the barn where he created his artwork, and a sale would be made. Every so often there would be a show in New York City, and someone famous would buy one of his paintings.

In 1968 Alan was commisioned by the Justice Department to do the portrait of Nicholas deB Katzenbach, former Under Secretary of State to Kennedy, and former Attorney General. Alan knew Katzenbach well, and the portrait was the first Avant Guard portrait done of an American government official. This painting hangs on the fifth floor of the Justice Department to this very day.

When Alan was 55 he was diagnosed with Lou Gerhig's disease and was told he had a year to live. He was just about to start his own art school in Connecticut. His death was very hard on his family. His family knew him as 'The King', and it has been for purposes of healing that they have not been able to market his work until now.

A book has been written about Alan called Remote Assassin. Below is the plot summary to the book. If interested you may visit the site which has extensive knowledge in regards to Alan as part of the French Resistance and his life after the war. The web address is as follows. www.remoteassassin.com

This is the true story of a man who single-handedly formed a small but deadly group of assassins whose main occupation was the systematic assassination of post-World War 2 Nazis and their collaborators. The group assassinated approximately 300 Nazis or Nazi collaborators, about one per month, over a period of 25 years, from 1945 to 1970. The group was not formally bankrolled by any government or organization, and operated on a very limited budget. Besides the fact that this group was never exposed and never missed their target, the most amazing aspect of the story is that each assassination was preceded by a remote vision, which was given to the leader of the group. Each remote vision gave precise details about the person to be assassinated, including location and daily activities. The information given in the visions was never proven to be wrong. The group was disbanded after the visions stopped coming, and the leader of the group died of a terminal illness a few years later.

The story will then detail the formation of the group that investigated the information in the original remote vision, how they planned and executed the first assassination, and how the group dealt with the fact that the leader's visions kept on coming. It describes the group's commitment to the goal of eliminating the people in the leader's continuing visions with the intent of preventing the possible re-establishment of the Nazi organization anywhere in the world. Three different assassinations are dramatized, with descriptions of the remote viewing, planning and execution of each.

In real life, nothing about these events was ever written down, for reasons of security, but the leader of the group did confide a few details verbally to his son before his death. It is these details, fictionalized, that are used to tell this amazing story. Interspersed throughout the book are descriptions of the leader’s life as a small-town artist and teacher, forming a contrast between his peaceful American family life and his double life as an assassin of Nazis.

Alan Wood-Thomas was born on Jan. 12, 1920 in Paris, into a family of artists. His father, Cyrus W. Thomas, was an architect studying at the Beaux Arts School. His mother, Victoria Marie Ange Dauriac, was a French sculptress, who at the age of sixteen, was the youngest person ever to have been allowed into the Beaux Arts School. Living in Paris Alan spent most of his free time mountain climbing. He joined the French Boy Scouts and through time became an eagle scout, as well as first in his class. As a teenager he studied architecture with his father and sculpting with his mother. Much of his canvas work has a sculpting feel to it, where the images actually protrude from the piece.