Tom Thomson

Tom Thomson
Life & Work by David P. Silcox
Opulent October 1915–16
Tom Thomson, Opulent October, 1915–16
Oil on canvas, 54.0 x 77.3 cm
Private collection, Thornhill, Ontario
Thomson, like all his colleagues, was inspired by autumn—Canada’s full dress uniform.
His rendition of this season ranged widely, from splotches of Cubist-like forms to
galaxies of leaves dancing through a universe of colour, as they are here.
The oil sketch on which Opulent October was based provides a surprising
contrast to the larger final painting and reveals a major advance in Thomson’s
development as an artist. In the canvas, Thomson uses only the basic structure of the
sketch and recreates all the detail. This transformation of a modest sketch into a canvas
entirely different in tone, colour, and light was a breakthrough in method and
achievement. Here we see just how prodigious Thomson’s abilities had become.
Thomson used a dozen or so of his four hundred or more sketches as models for
large canvases, a fact that puts his huge body of small oils into a category entirely
different from those done by most members of the Group of Seven. Lawren Harris
(1885–1970), A.Y. Jackson (1882–1974), J.E.H. MacDonald (1873–1932), Fred Varley
(1881–1969), and Arthur Lismer (1885–1969) all used their sketches as the starting
point for large oils. Thomson did not. He wanted the large canvases to have the same
Tom Thomson, Sketch for “Opulent October,”
1915, oil on wood panel, 17.2 x 24.1 cm,
private collection
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