Thomas John "Tom" Thomson was an influential Canadian artist of the early
20th century. He directly influenced a group of Canadian painters that would
come to be known as the Group of Seven, and though he died before they formally
formed, he is sometimes incorrectly credited as being a member of the group
itself. Thomson died under mysterious circumstances.
Personal life Thomas John "Tom" Thomson was born near
Claremont, Ontario to John and Margaret Thomson and grew up in Leith, Ontario,
near Owen Sound. In 1899, he entered a machine shop apprenticeship at an iron
foundry owned by William Kennedy, a close friend of his father. He was fired
from his apprenticeship by a foreman who complained of Thomson's habitual
tardiness. Also in 1899, he volunteered to fight in the Second Boer War, but was
turned down because of a medical condition. Thomson was reputed to have
been refused entry into the Canadian Expeditionary Force for service in the
First World War also. He served as a fire ranger in Algonquin Park during
this time. In 1901, he enrolled in a business college in Chatham, Ontario,
but dropped out eight months later to join his older brother, George Thomson,
who was operating a business school in Seattle. There he met and had a brief
summer romance with Alice Elinor Lambert. In 1904, he returned to Canada,
and may have studied with William Cruikshank, 1905–1906. In 1907, Thomson
joined Grip Ltd., an artistic design firm in Toronto, where many of the
future members of the Group of Seven also worked.
Thomson first visited Algonquin Park in 1912. There after he often traveled
around Ontario with his colleagues, especially to the wilderness of Ontario,
which was to be a major source of inspiration for him. In 1912 he began
working, along with other artists who would go on to form the Group of Seven
after his death, at Rous and Mann Press, but left the following year to work as a
full-time artist. He first exhibited with the Ontario Society of Artists in
1913, and became a member the following year. He would continue to exhibit with
the Ontario Society until his death. In 1914 the National Gallery of Canada
began acquiring his paintings, which signaled a turning point in Thomson's
career. For several years he shared a studio and living quarters with fellow
artists. Beginning in 1914 he worked intermittently as a fire fighter,
ranger, and guide in Algonquin Park, but found that such work did not allow
enough time for painting. During the next three years, he produced many of
his most famous works, including The Jack Pine, The West Wind and The
Northern River. Paintings
Art and technique Thomson was largely self-taught. He was
employed as a graphic designer with Toronto's Grip Ltd., an experience which
honed his draughtsmanship. Although he began painting and drawing at an early
age, it was only in 1912, when Thomson was well into his thirties, that he
began to paint seriously. His first trips to Algonquin Park inspired him to
follow the lead of fellow artists in producing oil sketches of natural scenes
on small, rectangular panels for easy portability while travelling. Between
1912 and his death in 1917, Thomson produced hundreds of these small
sketches, many of which are now considered works in their own right, and
are housed in such galleries as the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and the
National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Many of Thomson's major paintings,
including Northern River, The Jack Pine, and The West Wind, began as sketches
before being expanded into large oil paintings at Thomson's "studio"—an old
utility shack with a wood-burning stove on the grounds of the Studio Building,
an artist's enclave in Rosedale, Toronto. Although Thomson sold few of
these paintings during his lifetime, they formed the basis of posthumous
exhibitions, including one at Wembley in London, that eventually brought
international attention to his work. Thomson peaked creatively between 1914
and 1917. He was aided by the patronage of Toronto physician James MacCallum,
who enabled Thomson's transition from graphic designer to professional
painter. Although the Group of Seven was not
founded until after Thomson's death, his work is sympathetic to that of group
members A. Y. Jackson, Frederick Varley, and Arthur Lismer. These artists shared
an appreciation for rugged, unkempt natural scenery, and all used broad
brush strokes and a liberal application of paint to capture the stark beauty and
vibrant colour of the Ontario landscape. Thomson's art bears some stylistic
resemblance to the work of European post-impressionists such as Vincent van
Gogh and Paul Cézanne, whose work he may have known from books or visits to art
galleries. Other key influences were the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts
movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, styles with
which he would have been familiar from his work in the graphic arts.
Described as having an "idiosyncratic palette," Thomson's control of colour
was exceptional. He often mixed available pigments to create unusual,
new colours making his distinctive palette along with his brushwork
instantly recognizable regardless of the subject of his work.
For artist and Thomson biographer Harold Town, the brevity of Thomson's career
hinted at an artistic evolution never fully realized. He cites the oil
painting Unfinished Sketch as "the first completely abstract work in Canadian
art," a painting that, whether or not it was intended as a purely non-objective
work, presages the innovations of Abstract expressionism.
Death Thomson disappeared during a canoeing
trip on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park on July 8, 1917, and his body was
discovered in the lake eight days later. Contradictory descriptions of Thomson's
corpse have been produced. Thomson's body was examined by Dr. Goldwin
Howland, who concluded the official cause of death was drowning. The
coroner, Dr. Arthur E. Ranney, MD, concluded that the drowning was
accidental. The body was interred in Mowat Cemetery, near Canoe Lake, the day
after his body was discovered. Under the direction of his older brother, George
Thomson, the body was exhumed two days later and re-interred in the family plot
beside the Leith Presbyterian Church on July 21.
In 1935, Blodwen Davies published the first exploration of Thomson's death
outside of newspaper accounts from the time of Thomson's death. As this was a
self-published edition of 500 copies, her doubts about the official decision
of cause of death did not receive wide attention. A version of her text, edited
by A. Y. Jackson, was published posthumously in 1967.
In 1970, Judge William Little's book, The Tom Thomson Mystery, recounted
how—in 1956—Little and three friends dug up Thomson's original gravesite, in
Mowat Cemetery on Canoe Lake. They believed that the remains they found
were Thomson's. In the fall of 1956, medical investigators determined that
the body was that of an unidentified Aboriginal.
Since the publication of The Tom Thomson Mystery, theories have proliferated
regarding Thomson's cause of death, including suicide and murder. Proponents
of these theories suggest that Thomson may have committed suicide over a woman
who holidayed at Canoe Lake being pregnant with his child, or out of
despondence over his lack of artistic recognition. Others have suggested that
Thomson was in a fatal fight with one of two men who were living at Canoe Lake,
or killed by poachers in the park. In 2007, the Great Unsolved Mysteries in
Canadian History project launched "Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson
Tragedy", a book-length, bilingual web site featuring a selection of over fifty
transcribed primary and secondary documents related to Thomson's death,
including documents never before made public, such as Blodwen Davies' 1931
request to the Ontario Attorney General for opening of Thomson's Algonquin Park
burial site. Utilizing, in part, the Great Unsolved
Mysteries site transcriptions, Canadian newspaper columnist Roy MacGregor has
described his 2009 examination of records of the 1956 remains unearthed by
William Little and concluded that the body was actually Thomson's, indicating
"that Thomson never left Canoe Lake." In an essay entitled, "The Many Deaths
of Tom Thomson," published in 2011, Gregory Klages describes how testimony
and theories regarding Thomson's death have evolved since 1917. Assessing the
secondary accounts against the primary evidence, Klages concludes that
Thomson's death is consistent with the official assessment of 'accidental
drowning'. Historians Kathleen Garay and Christl Verduyn state, "Klages' forensic
archival sleuthing does provide for the first time some degree of certainty
regarding this event." Legacy and influence
Since his death, Thomson's work has grown in value and popularity. In 2002,
the National Gallery of Canada staged a major exhibition of his work, giving
Thomson the same level of prominence afforded Picasso, Renoir, and the Group
of Seven in previous years. In recent decades, the increased value of
Thomson's work has led to the discovery of numerous forgeries of his work on the
market. In September 1917, the artists James E.
H. MacDonald and John W. Beatty, assisted by area residents, erected a
memorial cairn at Hayhurst Point on Canoe Lake, where Thomson died. The cost
was paid by MacCallum. It can be accessed by boat. In the summer of 2004
another historical marker honouring Thomson was moved from its previous
location nearer the centre of Leith to the graveyard in which Thomson is now
buried. In 1967, the Tom Thomson Art Gallery opened in Owen Sound. Numerous
examples of his work are also on display at the National Gallery of Canada in
Ottawa, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in
Kleinburg, Ontario. Thomson's influence can be seen in the work of later
Canadian artists, including Emily Carr, Goodridge Roberts, Harold Town, and
Joyce Wieland. During the 1970s, Joyce Wieland based a
movie on the life and death of Tom Thomson. Journalist Roy MacGregor's 1980
novel Shorelines is a fictional interpretation of Thomson's death. Neil
Lehto's Algonquin Elegy is an 'historical fiction' focusing on
Thomson's death. Several songs reference Thomson's death: Alex Sinclair's Tom
Thomson, and The Tragically Hip's "Three Pistols"—have also been recorded.
Several books of poetry inspired by Thomson have also been published: George
Whipple's Tom Thomson and Other Poems, Troy Jollimore's Tom Thomson in
Purgatory, and Kevin Irie, Viewing Tom Thomson: A Minority Report. In 2011,
artist George A. Walker created "The Mysterious Death of Tom Thomson", a
"wordless narrative told in 109 wood engravings."
On 3 May 1990 Canada Post issued 'The West Wind, Tom Thomson, 1917' in the
Masterpieces of Canadian art series. The stamp was designed by Pierre-Yves
Pelletier based on an oil painting "The West Wind", by Thomas John Thomson in
the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario. The 50¢ stamps are perforated
13 X 13.5 and were printed by Ashton-Potter Limited.
Citations Further reading
Books on Thomson's art include the 1977 The Silence and the Storm by Harold Town
and David Silcox, and several short coffee table books by former Art Gallery
of Ontario curator, Joan Murray. The 2002 book, Tom Thomson, created to
accompany the National Gallery of Canada and Art Gallery of Ontario exhibition of
Thomson's work, ranks as the most in-depth survey of Thomson's oeuvre.
Boulet, Roger. The Canadian Earth and Tom Thomson. M. Bernard Loates Cerebrus
Publishing, 1982. National Library of Canada, AMICUS No. 2894383
Davies, Blodwen. Paddle & Palette: The Story of Tom Thomson, Toronto, ON:
Ryerson Press, 1930. Davies, Blodwen. A Study of Tom Thomson:
The Story of a Man Who Looked for Beauty and for Truth in the Wilderness, Discus
Press, 1935; rep. Mitchell Press, 1967. Grace, Sherril. Inventing Tom Thomson,
Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2004.
Klages, Gregory. "The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson," Archival Narratives for
Canada: Re-telling Stories In A Changing Landscape, Christine Garay & Christl
Verduyn, eds., Blackpoint, NS: Fernwood Press, 2011, pp. 274–297. ISBN
9781552664469 Klages, Gregory. "The Many Deaths of Tom
Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction", Toronto: Dundurn, forthcoming spring
2016. Lehto, Neil J., Algonquin Elegy: Tom
Thomson's Last Spring, Lincoln, Nebraska: iUniverse, 2005. ISBN
9780595361328 Little, William T. The Tom Thomson
Mystery. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1970. ISBN 0-07-092655-7
Littlefield, Angie. The Thomsons of Durham: Tom Thomson's Family Heritage.
Self-published. MacGregor, Roy, "Northern Light: The
Enduring Mystery of Tom Thomson and the Woman Who Loved Him", Toronto: Random
House, ISBN 9780307357397 Murray, Joan. Tom Thomson: The Last
Spring. Toronto: Dundurn, 1994. Murray, Joan. Tom Thomson: Design for A
Canadian Hero. Toronto: Dundurn, 1998. Murray, Joan. A Treasury of Tom Thomson.
Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 2012. Poling, Jim Sr. Tom Thomson: The Life
and Mysterious Death of the Famous Canadian Painter. Altitude Publishing,
2003. Robson, A.H. Tom Thomson. 1937.
Silcox, David. Tom Thomson: An Introduction to His Life and Art.
Firefly Books, 2002. Silcox, David. The Group of Seven and
Tom Thomson. Firefly Books, 2011. Tom Thomson. Reid, Dennis, ed. Toronto,
ON: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2002. Town, Harold and Silcox, David P. The
Silence and the Storm. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977;
anniversary edition forthcoming 2016. External links
Silcox, David P. Tom Thomson: Life & Work. Art Canada Institute. 2015.
p:thecanadianencyclopedia.comtom-thomson Joan Murray. Tom Thomson. The Canadian
Encyclopedia. 2013. http:www.tomthomson.org The Tom Thomson
Memorial Gallery. http:archives.cbc.caarts_entertainment
CBC television program about Thomson's painting, The Jack Pine. 1968.
http:archives.cbc.caon_this_daytwt CBC—Front Page Challenge clip on Tom
Thomson's Death. 1970. https:www.nfb.cawest_wind Short film
about Thomson's life and art, directed by Graham McInnes for the National Film
Board of Canada. 1944. :www.biographi.caShowBio.asp?BioId=41859
Tom Thomson. Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. Volume
XIV. http:www.tomthomsonart.ca West Wind; The
Vision of Tom Thomson. 2012. Award-winning documentary.
http:algonquinelegy.com Neil Lehto, Algonquin Elegy. Essays related to
Thomson's death. Blog.. en.caNatural-Genius/McMichael-Story.aspx
"The Legacy of the Group of Seven" Tom Thomson's life art and special gifts