The name Tom Thomson conjures up an Image of the Canadian North which may combine in the hearts of wistful city-dwellers with ideas of mystery and romance. The name may also bring to mind Canada’s two best-known paintings: The West Wind and Jack Pine—two works that have become part of every Canadian’s childhood through classroom reproductions.
But who was the artist? How did he develop? What did he Intend in his paintings? These are all questions that have remained almost completely unanswered, perhaps due to the length of time which people traditionally take to Investigate a myth—for a myth Is what Thomson has become.
Indeed, as early as 1924, only seven years after the artist’s death, an artist and friend, F. H. Varley, told one of his students that Thomson was already a legend. The reasons why are apparent: his life and the circumstances of his death are equally mysterious.
He lived in the Canadian wilderness for the latter part of his life. Much later, the section of the country he most favoured was to become the nation’s vacationland, rather than an area of which few knew outside of the occasional fisherman, forest ranger, or logger. Through some strange chemistry which has taken place in the heart of Canada since its inception, it is this section—the North—which is seen as the symbolic image of the nation. Colder, cleaner, purer, and marked by a distinctive geography of hills, lakes and forests—all these reasons serve to make it our spiritual heartland.
It was accepted as somehow fitting, though tragic, that Thomson should drown in those Northern waters, for nature, and especially ‘the wild,’ was seen by the artists of this era as a personification of more than natural forces. One can judge this from the Inscription (written and designed by J. E. H. MacDonald) on Thomson’s cairn, erected September 27th, 1917, on Canoe Lake, which reads In part as follows:
He lived humbly hut passionately with the
wild . . . It drew him apart and repeated itself
wonderfully to him. It sent him out from the
woods only to show these revelations through
his art, and it took him to itself at last!
The use of the words ‘revealed’ and ‘revelations’ suggests some of the semi-mystical connotations with which Thomson’s friends—and probably Thomson himself—regarded the Nature which they sought. This quest was seen as a communion with the spirit of the North, and Indeed, one of Thomson’s main themes is the image of a tree pitted against the forces of wind and wave—which perhaps may have been to him a metaphor for ‘that eternal conflict which Nature wages against man, the vulgar intruder.’ But there are other reasons for Thomson’s elevation to legendary status. He died in the prime of life and full of promise, and so became an ‘early laurelled head’ to whom A. E. Housman’s words might have been applied:
Now you wilt not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out.
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
With Thomson, one forever wonders what more he would have achieved if he had lived.
Because of his early death, his paintings seem to have that flawless quality of youth, that exuberance which makes obstacles easy to overcome. His work was actually both a prototype for, and an archetype of, the work of the Group of Seven which followed him. Though the Group was only founded in 1920, three years after he died, many of the members’ ideas and ideals had been formulated by Thomson.
After his sudden death, the members of the Group abandoned Algonquin Park as a sketching site and went Instead to the Algoma area. Algonquin Park was considered ‘too sad’, too fdled with the presence of the dead painter. From Algoma, the Group decided to go farther and farther North, and eventually they expanded their range to include all of Canada.
Later, they recalled specific memories of Thomson and paid homage to him. Thomson’s example had released in all of them a new freedom in handling paint and a greater brilliance of colour. Why Thomson’s paintings are so memorable may be partly because of the artist’s training in the photo-engraving houses of his day. This training moulded his vision in a certain way. His best remembered paintings combine the vivid impression of an illustrator’s work with the intense impact of a designer’s. It could even be argued that his work in oils matured only when it incorporated these primarily graphic qualities.
Thomson’s images reproduce extremely well. Hence, his work sometimes conveys more monumentally and sweep in reproduction than did the original. This achievement, the creation of the ‘memorable image’, combined with extensive commercial reproduction of Thomson’s work, the mystique of his life, the circumstances surrounding his mysterious death, and the extent of his influence, have all contributed to the creation of the legend.
But Thomson should be remembered for something more. An examination of the artist’s life and work, using such primary source material as exists, shows that Thomson began doing semi-abstract paintings no later than 1914. Every autumn from that time on led him to the same results: a series of colour notes which are pure lyrical abstractions. This feeling for abstraction, at such a remarkably early period in Canadian art, was found only in Thomson’s small panels. The culmination of these experiments was in the year 1916, the autumn before the artist died. His study of the colours of the Canadian autumn is analogous in some ways to Constable’s observations of clouds. But it is probable that if Thomson had lived, truly abstract or non-figurative art would have appeared in Canada much sooner than it did. Thomson might then be remembered not only as a precursor of a national school of pervasive—and therefore occasionally limiting—influence, but also as a liberating figure whose work had the effect of adjusting Canadian art to the modern era with greater ease than was actually experienced.
Joan Murray
The Art of Tom Thomson