Death and legacy of Tom Thomson
The Canadian painter Tom Thomson died on 8 July 1917, on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Provincial Park in Nipissing District, Ontario, Canada.
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.
In addition to his prominence as an artist, he has developed a reputation as an ideal Canadian outdoorsman, proficient in canoeing and fishing, though his talents in the former have come to be doubted.
[1] He further wrote, [Thomson] was wont to paddle out into the centre of the lake on which he happened to be camping and spend the whole night there in order to get away from the flies and mosquitos [sic].
[13][14][15] In 1912, after hearing that Thomson had capsized and lost most of his supplies on a canoeing trip up the Mississagi River, friend John McRuer replied saying, "You might have been drowned you devil; and that was not the first time you were bumped, eh!
The deep love of fishing he developed while young remained for his entire life, so much so that his reputation through Algonquin Park was equally divided between art and angling.
[17] Upon visiting Canoe Lake for the first time in 1914, A. Y. Jackson wrote to J. E. H. MacDonald, "It appears that Tom Thomson is some fisherman, quite noted round here.
"[18][19][20] From 1914 onward, Thomson regularly traveled to Algonquin Park in the spring, either camping on Canoe Lake or staying at the Mowat Lodge hotel.
[32][33][note 2] This is especially evident in what is perhaps his final work, After the Storm, which, "When viewed up close, Thomson's thick, broad application of paint in this landscape melts into pure abstraction.
"[48] Regarding the four inch bruise on Thomson's temple, he wrote that, "no doubt, [it] was caused by stricking [sic] some [obstacle], like a stone, when the body was drowned.
[50][51] With financial assistance provided by MacCallum, on 27 September 1917 J. E. H. MacDonald, John William Beatty, Shannon Fraser, George Rowe and local residents erected a memorial cairn at Hayhurst Point on Canoe Lake, where Thomson died.
[52][note 8] Because of Thomson's deep love for the area, the Group "had not the heart to go back to Algonquin Park, so they moved to Algoma and Lake Superior, and then to the Arctic, Yukon, Labrador, and other parts of the country.
"[59] 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.
The grave site has become a popular spot for visitors to the area with many fans of Thomson's work leaving pennies or small art supplies behind as tribute.
Thomson's influence can be seen in the work of later Canadian artists, including Emily Carr, Goodridge Roberts, Harold Town, and Joyce Wieland.
[73] Thomson's lack of formal art education similarly caused the other members of the group to later see him as a natural, untainted artist, and this view has entered the myth and public perception surrounding him.
[72][74] David Silcox and Andrew Hunter have argued that these perceptions were primarily propagated by his friends, those who formed the Group of Seven in the years following his death and others in the Canadian art scene,[note 9] nearly all of whom relied on the same basic details in their treatments of Thomson's life and career.
"[79] Blodwen Davies wrote, "Through the story of painting in Canada there stalks a tall, lean trailsman, with his sketch box and paddle, an artist and dreamer who made the wilderness his cloister and there worshipped Nature in her secret moods.
[85][note 11] Despite the popular notion that Thomson had no formal art instruction, it is possible that he briefly studied under British artist William Cruikshank around 1905.
"[96] These techniques can be seen within Thomson's work, whether it be Impressionism in The Pointers (1916–17); Art Nouveau in Northern River (1914–15), Decorative Landscape, Birches (1915–16), Spring Ice (1915–16) and The West Wind (1916–17); or Expressionism in After the Storm (1917) and Cranberry Marsh (1916).
[97] Canadian poet and member of the Montreal Group, A. J. M. Smith wrote in a letter to Sandra Djwa that it was Thomson's painting The Jack Pine that helped him get started on his poem, "The Lonely Land.
[99][100] The first stanza utilizes the texture ("jagged," "smooth") and rhythmic movement ("sharp," "bitter," "barbs") of a painting as it describes a northern landscape.
Works depicted have included The Jack Pine (printed in 1967), April in Algonquin Park (1977), Autumn Birches (1977), The West Wind (1990) and In the Northland (2016).
I am convinced that people's desire to believe the Thomson murder mystery/soap opera is rooted in the firmly fixed idea that he was an expert woodsman, intimate with nature.
"[121][page needed] David Silcox and Harold Town have pointed out incorrect evidence being used to justify the belief that Thomson was murdered.
This claim is a misinterpretation of Robinson's 1930s observation that the body had a carefully bound fishing line around a sprained ankle, which Silcox and Town write was a common remedy for arthritis or a sore joint.
[41] Silcox has proposed that it is easy to imagine Thomson standing in his canoe to cast a fishing line, losing his balance in the process, hitting his head on the gunwale and falling into the water unconscious, only to drown.
Historians Kathleen Garay and Christl Verduyn state, "Klages' forensic archival sleuthing does provide for the first time some degree of certainty regarding this event.
On 17th Tuesday, I examined [the body] and found it to be that of a man aged about 40 years in advanced stage of decomposition, face abdomen and limbs swollen, blisters on limbs, was a bruise on right temple size of 4" long, no other sign of external marks visible on body, air issuing from mouth, some bleeding from right ear, cause of death drowning.
[47]I have just returned from Canoe Lake where I spent the weekend helping Mr. [J. W.] Beatty to put on the plate and give the cairn a few finishing touches.
