Death and legacy of Tom Thomson

Thomson fishing at Tea Lake Dam in Algonquin Provincial Park, c. 1915/16

Though he is most known for his painting, Tom Thomson is often mythologized as a veritable outdoorsman.[1] He was taken out of school at an early age, possibly due to a lung condition.[2][3][4] This afforded him time to explore wooded areas and develop a deep appreciation for nature.[5] He spent much of his time on walks with his grandmother's first cousin, Dr. William Brodie, a well known entomologist, ornithologist and botanist.[6][7] He similarly developed a love for both fishing and hunting,[8][9] though he eventually gave up hunting after shooting a deer "as the look in its eyes was too human."[9][10]

Dr. James MacCallum contributed stories to Thomson's image as an outdoorsman, including one story that Thomson encountered a large wolf who, after sniffing him briefly, left him alone.[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]. Motionless he studied the night skies and the changing outline of the shores while beaver and otter played around his canoe.[1][11]

Thomson has often been remembered as an expert canoeist. David Silcox has argued that this image is likely romanticized.[12] A. Y. Jackson wrote that Thomson "paddled like an Indian," holding his abilities in high esteem.[12] Despite this, Park ranger Mark Robinson said that Thomson admitted to him in 1913 that he did not know much about canoeing.[12] In addition, there are multiple stories of him capsizing.[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!"[12]

Despite these romantic images, an area that Thomson was no doubt proficient in was fishing. 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.[16] While most who visited the Park were led by hired guides, Thomson moved through on his own. Indeed, many of his fishing locations appear in his work.[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]

Path Behind Mowat Lodge, Spring 1917. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

From 1914 onward, Thomson regularly traveled to Algonquin Park in the spring, either camping on Canoe Lake or staying at the Mowat Lodge hotel. He spent his time there sketching and working as a fishing guide, returning to Toronto in the fall, producing larger canvas works from his original sketches.[21] In 1917 Thomson returned to Canoe Lake at the beginning of April, arriving early enough to paint the remaining snow and the ice breaking up on the surrounding lakes.[21][22] The paintings became his own visual diary of the day,[21][23] morphing into a series that he described as, "a record of the weather for 62 days, rain or shine, or snow, dark or bright."[24] He wrote home to his father saying that, though he had not sold many sketches that year, that he thought he could "get along for another year at least while I stick to painting as long as I can."[25] In his final letter to MacCallum — sent only one day before his disappearance — he complained of flies and mosquitoes. He had not done much sketching since they emerged, but was hopeful the warmer weather would soon kill them off. He promised to send along some of his winter sketches and was looking forward to sketching on several trips planned for the next two months.[26][note 1]

The works he completed over this spring display the masterful control of colour he had come to develop—especially apparent in a painting like The Rapids[28]—and are painted with a particular "crispness and freshness."[22] His sketches in particular show how he matured into "a subtlety of expression, using a brisk but delicate handling."[21] The bold and expressive brushstrokes that he is now famous for are evident in paintings like Path Behind Mowat Lodge and Tea Lake Dam.[29] Also on display in the former are small areas of bare wood panel, visible through the paint. This device further adds to the lighting of the scene.[30] The aggressive style of painting Thomson utilized was seen consistently in the Expressionist movement that followed his death.[31] His final works have been described by art historians David Silcox and Harold Town as moving in the direction of abstraction.[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."[34] The landscapes of his final works in late spring and early summer often contain these types of bold, generalized forms.[35]

Besides the deep love he had come to develop for Algonquin Park, Thomson was beginning to show an eagerness to depict areas beyond the park and explore other northern subjects.[36] In a May 1917 letter to his brother-in-law, he wrote:

I may possibly go out on the Canadian Northern [Railway] this summer to paint the Rockys [sic] but have not made all the arrangements yet. If I go it will be in July & August.[37][38]

A. Y. Jackson suggested Thomson would have traveled even further north, just as the other members of the Group of Seven eventually did.[39]

• 
  The Rapids, Spring 1917. Private collection, Toronto
• 
  Tea Lake Dam, Summer 1917. McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg
• 
  After the Storm, Summer 1917. Private collection

In the years since his death, Thomson has often been described as being independent of previous artistic traditions.[71][72][73] Many have pointed to the fact that he never visited Europe or museums in the United States as evidence that he managed to avoid the developments of Modernist experiment.[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.[75] Lismer, for example, wrote, "[Thomson] had no connection with styles or schools... He had nothing to do with Europe and in his art there is not a trace of inherited style or influence from abroad... If one knew Thomson, one also realized that he knew nothing of such as things as [Art Nouveau or Impressionism]."[73] Jackson similarly wrote that Thomson's "rugged individuality was never dominated by any outside influence,"[73] and that Thomson was the "Instigator of the movement to the North Country."[76] Lawren Harris echoed these views, saying "There was nothing that interfered with Tom's direct, primal vision of nature. He was completely innocent of any of the machinery of civilization and was happiest when away from it in the north."[77] Barker Fairley wrote that, "Neither theory nor any acquired opinion can have had any permanent place in Thomson's mind. He was naïve throughout."[78] Harold Mortimer-Lamb wrote, "With his equipment he went to Nature and communed with her in all her moods."[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."[80][81] F. B. Housser wrote, "Never before had such knowledge and the feeling for such things been given to expression in paint. Thomson's canvases are unique in the annals of all art especially when it is remembered that he was untrained as a painter. His master was nature."[82] In general, members of the Group claimed that their art did not originate in established artistic traditions but was instead dictated by the landscape itself.[71][note 10] A. Y. Jackson described Thomson as "the guide, the interpreter" who introduced his friends to "a new world, the north country."[83][84] Dennis Reid argued similarly, writing that Thomson's death was seen "almost as a sacrifice to the idea of an indigenous Canadian art... Thomson was... to become Canada's first Old Master, and as an idea he has acted as a constant inspiration to all who believed that the secret of Canada's self-knowledge is somehow contained in the land."[83][84] Revisionist art historians have criticized the view that Thomson and the Group of Seven were originators of a new Canadian nationalist style of art.[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.[86] Only two sources corroborate this however. The first is a single undated note from Cruikshank to professor James Mavor, arranging to bring a "Tomson" [sic] to meet him.[87][88] Further complicating the matter is that the original class list no longer survives.[88] The second is a letter from H. B. Jackson to Blodwen Davies, writing, "Tom studied from life & the antique in art school. If I remember right Cruikshank was the instructor."[89][90] Besides in-person instruction, it is also possible that he read John Ruskin's 1857 handbook, The Elements of Drawing, while learning to draw.[91] Outside of these possibilities, it seems that he had no other art instruction.[92] Thomson's work in commercial art however did seem to have an influence on his painting, leading him to familiarity with the Art Nouveau as well as Arts and Crafts movements.[3][93] Similarly, working with his fellow artists caused him to become aware of the techniques of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.[94][95] Regarding Art Nouveau tendencies, Jackson wrote that, "We (the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson) treated our subjects with the freedom of designers. We tried to emphasize colour, line and pattern."[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]

J. E. H. MacDonald, Fine Weather, Georgian Bay, 1913. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. This painting depicts Thomson (right) alongside his friend A. Y. Jackson (left) tying up their canoe while silhouetted against the clear, still waters.[98]

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 poem, perhaps Smith's most known and most anthologized, was first published in The McGill Fortnightly Review on 9 January 1926, subtitled "Group of Seven."[99][101] It underwent several revisions, appearing in Canadian Forum in July 1927 and the American magazine The Dial in June 1929.[102] Smith had not seen the painting in person, but only as a colour reproduction.[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.[103] Smith's 1925 poem "Prayer" proceeds similarly, even referencing a jack pine in one of the early stanzas.[104] Several other books of poetry inspired by Thomson have also been published, including George Whipple's Tom Thomson and Other Poems (2000),[105] Troy Jollimore's Tom Thomson in Purgatory (2006),[106] and Kevin Irie's Viewing Tom Thomson: A Minority Report (2012).[107]

Joyce Wieland's 1976 film The Far Shore is based on the life and death of Tom Thomson.[108] Journalist Roy MacGregor's 1980 novel Shorelines—later reissued in 2002 as Canoe Lake—is a fictional interpretation of Thomson's death.[109] Neil Lehto's 2005 book Algonquin Elegy is a self-described piece of historical fiction, focusing on Thomson's death.[110] Several songs reference Thomson's death, including The Tragically Hip's 1991 single "Three Pistols."[111]

In 2018, a section of Ontario Highway 60—the primary corridor through Algonquin Park—was renamed "Tom Thomson Parkway."[112] Canada Post has issued multiple stamps of Thomson's work from as early as 1967. 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).[113]

David Silcox and Harold Town have pointed out incorrect evidence being used to justify the belief that Thomson was murdered. Chief among these is that Thomson's feet were found tangled in wire. This claim is a misinterpretation of Robinson's 1930s observation that the body had a carefully bound fishing line around a sprained ankle, actually 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.[41]

In an essay titled "The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson," published in 2011, Gregory Klages describes how testimony and theories regarding Thomson's death have evolved since 1917.[114] Assessing the secondary accounts against the primary evidence, Klages concludes that Thomson's death is consistent with the official assessment of an accidental drowning. Historians Kathleen Garay and Christl Verduyn state, "Klages' forensic archival sleuthing does provide for the first time some degree of certainty regarding this event."[122] Klages expanded on these ideas in a book with a similar name, The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction, published in 2016. He particularly challenges MacGregor's claims, suggesting MacGregor is guilty of misrepresenting evidence.[115]