Tom Thomson
Born	(1877-08-05)August 5, 1877 Claremont, Ontario
Died	July 8, 1917(1917-07-08) (aged 39) Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park, Ontario

Thomas John "Tom" Thomson (August 5, 1877 – July 8, 1917) was an influential Canadian artist of the early 20th century. He directly influenced a group of Canadian painters that would come to be known as the Group of Seven, and though he died before they formally formed, he is sometimes incorrectly credited as being a member of the group itself. Thomson died under mysterious circumstances, which added to his mystique.

Personal life[link]

Tom Thomson was born near Claremont, Ontario to John and Margaret Thomson and grew up in Leith, near Owen Sound.^[1] In 1899, he entered a machine shop apprenticeship at an iron 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. Also in 1899 he volunteered to fight in the Second Boer War, but was turned down because of a medical condition. Thomson was reputed to have been refused entry into the Canadian Expeditionary Force for service in the First World War also. He served as a fire ranger in Algonquin Park during this time.^[2] In 1901, he enrolled in a business college in Chatham, Ontario but dropped out eight months later to join his older brother, George Thomson, who was operating a business school in Seattle. 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, 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 fishing in Algonquin Park

Thomson first visited Algonquin Park in 1912. Thereafter he often traveled around Canada with his colleagues, especially to the wilderness of Ontario, which was to be a major source of inspiration for him. In 1912 he 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 a studio and living quarters with fellow artists, before taking up residence 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, The West Wind and The Northern River.

Mysterious death[link]

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 was reported that there was fishing line wrapped around his leg and he had a head injury (which may have been post mortem).^[4] It has also been speculated that he was murdered by a German-American neighbour, 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 McCormick, 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. McCormick 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, without family members having seen the body. 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.^[5]

Paintings[link]

• 

  Tom Thomson's Forest Undergrowth

• 

  Tom Thomson's The Jack Pine 1916–17

• 

  Tom Thomson's Pine Island, Georgian Bay

• 

  Tom Thomson's April in Algonquin Park 1917

• West-wind.jpg

  Tom Thomson's The West Wind

Art and technique[link]

Tom Thomson cabin at McMichael

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 to paint 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 travelling. Between 1912 and his death in 1917, Thomson produced hundreds of these small sketches, many of which are now considered works in their own right, and are 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 Northern River, The Jack Pine, 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 the Studio Building, an artist's enclave in Rosedale, Toronto. Although Thomson sold few of these paintings during his lifetime, they formed the basis of posthumous exhibitions, including one at Wembley in London, that eventually brought international attention to his work.

Thomson's peaked creatively between 1914 and 1917. He was aided by the patronage of Toronto physician 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 Cézanne, 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.

For artist and Thomson biographer Harold Town, the brevity of Thomson's career hinted at an artistic evolution never fully realized. He cites the oil painting Unfinished Sketch as "the first completely abstract work in Canadian art," a painting that, whether or not it was intended as a purely non-objective work, presages the innovations of Abstract expressionism.^[6]

Legacy and influence[link]

The Tom Thomson Memorial Cairn, Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park

The Tom Thomson plaque in Leith, Ontario

Since his death, Thomson's work has grown in value and popularity. 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.

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. In the summer of 2004 another historical marker honouring 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, the 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.

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 an unknown Native Canadian. However Roy MacGregor has described a new (2009) examination of the 1956 evidence and concluded that the body was actually Thomson, indicating "that Thomson never left Canoe Lake."^[7]

Joyce Wieland based a movie (The Far Shore) on the life and death of Tom Thomson.

Citations[link]

References[link]

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.

• Boulet, Roger, "The Canadian Earth and Tom Thomson". M. Bernard Loates Cerebrus Publishing, 1982. National Library of Canada, AMICUS No. 2894383
• 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
• Littlefield, Angie. The Thomsons of Durham: Tom Thomson's Family Heritage.
• Murray, Joan. Tom Thomson: The Last Spring. Toronto: Dundurn, 1994.
• Poling, Jim Sr. Tom Thomson: The Life and Mysterious Death of the Famous Canadian Painter. Altitude Publishing (Canada), 2003.
• Town, Harold and Silcox, David P. The Silence and the Storm. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tom Thomson

• The Tom Thomson Memorial Gallery
• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
• "Death On A Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy" at Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History
• "Painting The Myth. The Mystery of Tom Thomson" an Interactive Biography
• An Art Retreat in Canada featuring the lore and lure of Tom Thomson
• Article about Thomson's relation to Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park
• 1970 CBC television program about Thomson's mysterious death
• CBC television program about Thomson's painting, The Jack Pine
• CBC -- Front Page Challenge clip on Tom Thomson's Death
• Dark Pines: a documentary investigation into the death of Tom Thomson documentary (2005)
• "The Legacy of the Group of Seven" Tom Thomson's life art and special gifts
• The Canadian Encyclopedia, Tom Thomson

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2011)

Roy MacGregor is a Canadian author of fiction and non-fiction. He grew up in Huntsville, Ontario.^[1] His work tends to focus on Canadian topics; Shelagh Rogers has dubbed him the "heir to Peter Gzowski". He has a longstanding interest in the life of Tom Thomson, and has written both a novel and a biography exploring the artist's life and mysterious death.^[2]

Bibliography[link]

RoyMacGregor talks about Northern Light on Bookbits radio.

• Northern Light. Random House, Canada, 2010.
• Home Team: Fathers, Sons and Hockey
• A Life in the Bush
• Canadians: A Portrait of a Country and Its People
• Canoe Lake
• Screech Owls

References[link]

This article about a Canadian writer or poet is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Joe Lake
Pitcher
Born: (1881-01-06)January 6, 1881 Brooklyn, New York
Died: June 30, 1950(1950-06-30) (aged 69) Brooklyn, New York
Batted: Right	Threw: Right
MLB debut
April 21, 1908 for the New York Highlanders
Last MLB appearance
August 25, 1913 for the Detroit Tigers
Career statistics
Win–loss record	62-90
Earned run average	2.85
Strikeouts	594
Teams
New York Highlanders (1908–1909) St. Louis Browns (1910–1912) Detroit Tigers (1912–1913)

Joseph Henry Lake (January 6, 1881 – June 30, 1950) was a pitcher in Major League Baseball from 1908 to 1913. He played for the New York Highlanders, St. Louis Browns, and Detroit Tigers. Lake made his major league debut on April 21, 1908; his final game was five years later on August 25, 1913.^[1] Lake's key pitches were the spitball and the fastball.^[2]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference, or Baseball-Reference (Minors)

This biographical article relating to an American baseball pitcher born in the 1880s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Ian A.C. Dejardin is an art historian and Director of the Dulwich Picture Gallery in Dulwich, southeast London, England.^[1][2] He succeeded Desmond Shawe-Taylor as Director in 2005 and was previously a Chief Curator at the Gallery from 1998.^[3]

Ian Dejardin holds an MA in the History of Art from the University of Edinburgh.^[4] He started a doctorate in art history at the University of Warwick, but then spent seven years developing a designer knitwear business in Cumbria. Subsequently he completed a postgraduate diploma in art gallery and museum studies at Manchester University. This was followed by curatorial appointments at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and with English Heritage (London Region).

In 1998, Dejardin was appointed as a curator at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and was responsible for the Gallery's Permanent Collection of paintings, furniture and works on paper. Dejardin became the Gallery's director in 2005 coordinating several major exhibitions on an annual basis.

Books by Ian Dejardin[link]

• Rembrandt to Gainsborough: Masterpieces from Dulwich Picture Gallery. With Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Giles Waterfield. Merrell Holberton Publishers, 1999.
• Henry Moore: At the Dulwich Picture Gallery. With Ann Garrould and Anita Feldman Bennet. Scala Publishers, 2004. ISBN 978-1-85759-352-5.
• The Dutch Italianates: 17th-Century Masterpieces from Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. Philip Wilson Publishers, 2008. ISBN 978-0-85667-657-4.
• Dulwich Picture Gallery, London: Director's Choice. Scala Publishers, 2009. ISBN 978-1-85759-584-0.

References[link]

This article about a British historian or genealogist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e