Jean-François Thomas de Thomon

[2] At the age of 17 Thomas was admitted to the class of Julien-David Le Roy at the Académie royale d'architecture, and trained there along with Karl von Moreaux, Charles Percier and Pierre François Léonard Fontaine.

[4] Dmitry Shvidkovsky wrote that, quite likely, emigration resulted from Thomas's own political allegiance to monarchy(he was "an ardent royalist and a fervent Catholic"[5] throughout his life[4]) and practical inability "to realize architectural dreams of the last years of the Ancien Régime" in revolutionary France.

[6] Earlier, most likely in 1792, he met with Russian ambassador to Vienna, prince Dmitry Golitsyn; in 1798 Thomas de Thomon accepted invitation from his brother Alexander, then living in Moscow.

[7] Thomas de Thomon initially worked for the Golytsins in their country residences and later relocated to Saint Petersburg; on 30 January 1802 he was hired by the Imperial government to rebuild Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre.

[11] His best known work, Old Stock Exchange on the spit of Vasilyevsky Island, was completed in 1805–1810 to a design approved shortly before the death of Paul of Russia; Thomon's drafts were preferred to earlier 1781 proposal by Giacomo Quarenghi,[12] that was suspended in 1784.

Igor Grabar, analyzing the difference between Italian and French versions of neoclassicism in Russia, considered Carlo Rossi and Thomas de Thomon the key figures of these branches of the same style.

Thomas de Thomon was the principal source for French classicism in Russia, complementing utopian fantasies of Claude Nicolas Ledoux with "a new trait that never appeared before – a serious, well-considered understanding, perhaps less dexterity but more depth.

"[14] Grabar noted that Thomas de Thomon apparently "borrowed" the sweeping shape of the Exchange from the stylistic experiments of the French architectural competitions hosted by Académie royale d'architecture.