Tom Thomson

Tom Thomson
Life & Work by David P. Silcox
In January that year Lawren Harris (1885–1970) and J.E.H. MacDonald (1873–
1932) had visited the Exhibition of Contemporary Scandinavian Art at the Albright Art
Gallery (now Albright-Knox Art Gallery) in Buffalo. They were struck by the similarities
between the raw Scandinavian landscape depicted in the paintings there and Canada’s,
and they returned with a catalogue annotated with their observations. This show proved
to be a turning point in Canadian art: from then on, these influential painters imbued
their colleagues, including Thomson, with the ambition to create a national art movement
for Canada, based on the country’s unspoiled “northern” character. Their enthusiasm
culminated in the formation of the Group of Seven in March 1920.
Significantly, not one of these friends attended another exhibition that took place
in New York in February–March 1913: the Armory Show (formally the International
Exhibition of Modern Art), which brought the most avant-garde modernist art of Europe
and America to New York and caused a sensation. Their focus was indeed inward; yet
this attitude may be exactly what, in the end, produced an outward identity for Canada.
On his way back to Toronto that same fall, Thomson stopped in Huntsville and
may have visited Winifred Trainor, whose family had a cottage on Canoe Lake in
Algonquin Park. Later, she was rumoured to be engaged to Thomson for a marriage in
the fall of 1917, but the records are thin, and she remains one of the mysteries in his
life story.
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This photograph by Tom Thomson, c. 1914, may
have been of Winifred Trainor
Painting Full Time
During his year of support from Dr. James
MacCallum in 1914, Thomson became hooked
on painting. Initially he had been reluctant to
accept the doctor’s offer, but, encouraged by the
sale of Northern Lake, 1912–13—a work he had
shown in the 1913 spring exhibition of the
Ontario Society of Artists—for $250 to the
Ontario government, he decided he would
devote his life to making art. He settled into a
regular pattern: every spring he headed north to
Algonquin Park as early as possible and stayed
there as long as he could into the fall.
Thomson spent the three to four winter
months in Toronto painting canvases in the
Studio Building at 25 Severn Street. Planned
The Studio Building, designed by Eden Smith and
financed by Lawren Harris and Dr. MacCallum,
was completed in 1914
and financed by Lawren Harris (1885–1970) and MacCallum, this structure was built in
1913–14 and comprised six studios, each with large north-facing windows, storage
racks, and a small sleeping mezzanine. Thomson and Jackson moved into Studio 1 in
January 1914, before construction was complete. They shared the rent of $22 a month
until Jackson joined the army at the end of the year, though both of them were away on
painting trips during much of that time. By early 1915, given his plan to spend two-thirds
of every year away from Toronto, Thomson had decided to move into the shed behind
Tom Thomson’s shack, behind the Studio
Building at 25 Severn Street, c. 1915, where he
lived and painted during the last three winters of
his life
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