Tom Thomson

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Tom Thomson Life & Work by David P. Silcox Cranberry Marsh, as a subject, is hardly dramatic: a swamp with a low round hill behind it, basking in a hot early-summer sun. Yet Thomson transforms it into a scintillating portrait of bright light and keen perception. The horizontal emphasis is strong and powerful; the gentle mound of the hill, which defines the arc of the sky, and the slight curl of the foreground are the only exceptions. What really jolts the viewer, however, is the central glowing field of the marsh itself: the bright golden yellows, the tangerine oranges, and the scattered threads of alizarin crimson are like a carpet of sunshine or the hottest coals of a forge. Piercing this broad, flat area are the dazzlingly intense small pools of lapis lazuli with some teal green, a deep contrasting colour that changes the palette of the painting like an abrupt change of tempo in music. Here Thomson was starting to move away from the subject of the painting and to travel toward abstraction. He was already years ahead of his circle of friends. Harris, Franklin Carmichael (1890–1945), and others close to the Group of Seven approached abstraction years later, when they finally realized that painting could be more than illustration and that the creation of an image might convey an emotional state or an aesthetic sensation. Cranberry Marsh, like After the Storm, 1917, is a step in the direction of abstraction—a step toward an end that Thomson never got the opportunity to explore. The Pointers 1916–17 Photograph of Tom Thomson on Canoe Lake, c. 1915–16. Photography likely by Maud Varley 44
Tom Thomson Life & Work by David P. Silcox The Pointers 1916–17 Tom Thomson, The Pointers, 1916–17 Oil on canvas, 101 x 114.6 cm Hart House Permanent Collection, University of Toronto In this magnificent and sparkling work, Thomson uses a quiverful of techniques drawn from the decades-old European styles of Impressionism, Pointillism, and the Fauves— though it’s unlikely he had seen anything more than black and white magazine reproductions of such paintings. There are hints in The Pointers of the precision of Georges Seurat (1859–1891), the dabbing strokes of Claude Monet (1840–1926), and the unconventional palette of Henri Matisse (1869–1954). Somehow Thomson made the tools he needed out of an eclectic medley of sources and created something that was distinctly his own: an image of loggers’ pointer boats that captures his overarching vision of a scene he knew well. 45
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Tom Thomson

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