- 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. He was closely associated with the painters who later became the
Group of Seven, but died under mysterious circumstances before it formed.
Biography
Tom Thomson was born near Claremont, Ontario and
grew up in Leith, near Owen Sound. In 1899,
he entered a machine shop apprenticeship at a 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. In 1899 he volunteered to fight in the
Second Boer War.[1] In 1901, he enrolled in a business college in Chatham
and dropped out eight months later to follow his older brother, George Thomson, who was operating a business school in
Seattle, Washington. 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 in 1905-1906.[2] 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 Ontario in 1912; thereafter he
often travelled with his colleagues around Canada, especially to the wilderness of Ontario,
which was to be a major source of inspiration for Thomson. In 1912 Thomson began working, along with other members of the Group
of Seven, at Rous and Mann Press, but left the following year to work as an artist full-time. He first exhibited with the Ontario
Society of Artists in 1913, and became a member in 1914, when the National Gallery
of Canada purchased one of his paintings. He would continue to exhibit with the Ontario Society until his death. For
several years he shared studio and living quarters with fellow artists, before taking up residence in a shack on Canoe Lake.
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.[3] During the next three years he produced many of his most famous works, including The Jack Pine and The West Wind.
Mysterious 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. 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 allegedly needed the
money for a new suit to marry Winnifred Trainor, whose parents had a cottage at Canoe Lake. Rumours circulated following his
drowning that she was pregnant with Thomson's child. Winnifred Trainor made a trip to Philadelphia 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.[4]
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.
Legacy and influence
Ontario provincial plaque to Tom Thomson, Leith, Ontario.
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.
The Tom Thomson Memorial Cairn, Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park
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.
Joyce Wieland based a movie (The Far Shore) on the life and death of Tom Thomson.
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.
Facts and figures
April in Algonquin Park, 1917
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Citations
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.
External links
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