Tom Thomson Art Gallery

Thomas John Thomson was a Canadian artist of the early 20th century. Over the course of his short career, he produced roughly 400 oil sketches on small wood panels along with around 50 larger works on canvas. They consist almost entirely of landscapes, depicting trees, skies, lakes, rivers and other nature scenes. His painting uses broad brush strokes and a liberal application of paint to capture the stark beauty and vibrant colour of the Ontario landscape. His accidental death at 39 by drowning came just prior to the founding of the Group of Seven and was seen by his contemporaries as a tragedy of Canadian art. Raised in rural Ontario, Thomson was born into a large family of farmers and displayed no immediate artistic talent. He worked several jobs before attending a business college, eventually developing rudimentary penmanship abilities. At the turn of the 20th century, he was employed in Seattle and Toronto as a pen artist at several different photoengraving firms, including Grip Ltd. There he met those who eventually formed the Group of Seven, including J. E. H. MacDonald, Lawren Harris, Frederick Varley, Franklin Carmichael and Arthur Lismer. In May 1912, he visited Algonquin Park for the first time. It was there that he acquired his first sketching equipment and, following MacDonald's advice, began to capture nature scenes. He became enraptured with the area and repeatedly returned, typically spending his winters in Toronto and the rest of the year in the Park. While his earliest paintings were not outstanding technically, they illustrated an above-average ability with composition and colour handling. Through his development his later paintings vary in composition and have vivid colours and thickly applied paint. His later work has had a great influence on Canadian art—paintings such as The Jack Pine and The West Wind have taken a prominent place in the culture of Canada and are some of the country's most iconic pieces of art. Thomson developed a reputation during his lifetime as a veritable outdoorsman, talented in both fishing and canoeing, though his talents in the latter have been contested. The tragic circumstances of his drowning on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park, linked with his image as a master canoeist, led to unsubstantiated but persistent rumours that he had been murdered or committed suicide. Although he died before the formal establishment of the Group of Seven, Thomson is often considered an unofficial member. His art is typically exhibited with the rest of the Group's, nearly all of which is located in Canada—mainly at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg and the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in Owen Sound.
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