Tom Thomson
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- For people with similar names, see Thomas Thompson.
Thomas John Thomson (August 5, 1877 – July 8, 1917) was an influential Canadian artist of the early 20th century.
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[edit] Biography
Tom Thomson was born near Claremont, Ontario and grew up in Leith, near Owen Sound. Some biographers report that in 1899 he tried unsuccessfully to volunteer to fight in the Second Boer War, and instead went to a business college in Chatham and later in Seattle, Washington. In 1904 he returned to Canada, and in 1907 joined an artistic design firm in Toronto where many of the future members of the Group of Seven also worked. With his colleagues he often travelled around Canada, especially to the wilderness of Ontario, which was a major source of inspiration for Thomson. His first exhibition was in 1913.
Beginning in 1914 he acted as a fire fighter and guide in Algonquin Park in Ontario. During the next three years he produced many of his most famous works, including The Jack Pine and The West Wind.
[edit] Mysterious death
Thomson disappeared during a canoeing trip on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park in on July 8, 1917, and his body was discovered in the lake eight days later. The official cause of death was accidental drowning but there are still questions about how he actually died. It has been speculated that he was murdered by a German-American neighbor, Martin Blecher, Jr., or that he fell on a fire grate during a drunken brawl with J. Shannon Fraser, owner of Canoe Lake's Mowat Lodge, over an old loan to Fraser for the purchase of canoes. Thomson alleged needed the money for a new suit to marry Winnifred Trainor, whose parents had a cottage at Canoe Lake. Rumors circulated following his drowning that she was pregnant with Thomson's child. Winnifred Trainor made a trip to Philadephia with her mother the following winter and returned around Easter. She never spoke about her relationship with Thomson. A nephew, Terrance Trainor MacGregor, an upper New York resident who inherited her estate, which included at least 13 small Thomson paintings and letters, said the letters confirm their engagement. MacGregor has refused to produce the letters for scholarly investigation. Others believe that Thomson, who produced at least 63 landscape paintings that last spring, many of which he gave away or discarded, suffered severe depression and drowned himself. He was buried at Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park on July 17, 1917. 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.
None of these theories are conclusive, and the wide range of speculation serves mostly to perpetuate Thomson's romantic legend.[1]
[edit] 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 painting 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 traveling. Between 1912 and his death in 1917, Thomson produced hundreds of these small sketches, many of which are now 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 The Jack Pine, Northern River, 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 an artist's enclave in Rosedale, Toronto. Although Thomson sold few of these paintings during his lifetime, they formed the basis of the posthumous exhibitions, including one at Wembley in London, that eventually brought international attention to his work.
Thomson's peak creative period was from 1914 to 1917. Thomson was aided by the patronage of Toronto physician Dr. James MacCallum, who enabled Thomson's transition from graphic designer to professional painter.
Although the Group of Seven was not officially 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 such post-impressionists as Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cezanne, 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.
Since his death, Thomson's work has grown ever-more valuable and popular. 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.
[edit] Legacy and influence
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 honoring 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 Memorial Art Gallery opened in Owen Sound. Numerous examples of his work are also on display at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, 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.
In 1970, Judge William Little published a book, The Tom Thomson Mystery, about his digging up of Thomson's original gravesite in the Mowat Cemetery on Canoe Lake in 1956. He and three companions found a body in what they believed was Thomson's coffin. Medical investigators determined that the body was that of a native Indian.
[edit] Facts and figures
- The Tragically Hip wrote a song dedicated to Tom Thomson called Three Pistols on their 1991 album Road Apples.
- Canada Post has honored Thomson with several stamps. See gallery, below.
 The Jack Pine, 1916-1917 |
 April in Algonquin Park, 1917 |
 Autumn Birches, 1915 |
 The West Wind, 1917 |
[edit] Citations
- ^ Town, Harold, and Silcox, David: Tom Thomson The Silence and the Storm, page 208. Firefly Books, 2001.
[edit] References
Books on Thomson's art include The Silence and the Storm by Harold Town and David Silcox, and several coffee table books by the art expert Joan Murray. Roy MacGregor's novel Shorelines (reissued in 2002 as Canoe Lake) is a fictional interpretation of Thomson's death.
- Lehto, Neil J. Algonquin Elegy Tom Thomson's Last Spring. iUniverse, 2005. ISBN 0-595-36132-3
- Little, William T. The Tom Thomson Mystery. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1970. ISBN 0-07-092655-7
- Murray, Joan. Tom Thomson: The Last Spring. Toronto: Dundurn, 1994.
- Town, Harold and David Silcox. The Silence and the Storm Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977.
[edit] External links
- The Tom Thomson Memorial Gallery
- Gallery of Tom Thomson Paintings
- Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
- "Painting The Myth:" an Interactive Biography of Tom Thomson
- An Art Retreat in Canada featuring the lore and lure of Tom Thomson
- Article about Thomson's relation to Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park
- 1970 CBC television program about Thomson's mysterious death
- CBC television program about Thomson's painting, The Jack Pine
- CBC -- Front Page Challenge clip on Tom Thomson's Death
- Dark Pines: a documentary investigation into the death of Tom Thomson documentary (2005)
| Group of Seven |
| Original members: Franklin Carmichael | Lawren Harris | A. Y. Jackson | Frank Johnston | Arthur Lismer | J. E. H. MacDonald | Frederick Varley |
| Other members: A. J. Casson | Edwin Holgate | LeMoine Fitzgerald | Tom Thomson |
