page_title: Artistic development of Tom Thomson
section_title: First ventures to Algonquin Park (1912–13)
hierarchical_section_title: Artistic development of Tom Thomson / Developments / Painting career / First ventures to Algonquin Park (1912–13)
context_page_description: Tom Thomson was a Canadian painter from the beginning of the 20th century. Beginning from humble roots, his development as a career painter was meteoric, only pursuing it seriously in the final years of his life. He became one of the foremost figures in Canadian art, leaving behind around 400 small oil sketches and around fifty larger works on canvas.
  Beginning his career in 1902 as a graphic designer, he only began to paint seriously in 1912 at the age of 35. His skills developed as he ventured through Algonquin Park, sketching scenes that interested him. His creative peak came from 1914 until his untimely death in 1917. His art style progressed from sombre, grey scenes into brilliantly coloured exposés, characterized by rapid and thickly applied brushstrokes. His later works presage the advances seen by the Abstract Expressionist movement.
context_section_description: It was in 1912 that Thomson's transition from commercial art towards his original style of painting became apparent. This transition appears to have been instigated by his first visit to Algonquin Park in May 1912. He acquired his first sketching equipment, but spent most of his trip fishing, save for "a few notes, skylines and colour effects." Dating sketches to this trip has sometimes proved difficult. One exception is the sketch Smoke Lake, Algonquin Park, easily dated because Thomson gave it to Bud Callighen around the time of their first meeting. Charles Hill has also included the "somewhat awkward" Old Lumber Dam, Algonquin Park as likely being made during the trip. Robson identified Drowned Land as being painted on the Mississagi Forest Reserve canoe trip. Also dated to this time are The Canoe and A Northern Lake (1912).
  In fall 1912 Thomson left Grip Ltd. to join another design firm, Rous & Mann. Leonard Rossell went on to write, "Those who worked there were all allowed time off to pursue their studies... Tom Thomson, so far as a I know, never took definite lessons from anyone, yet he progressed quicker than any of us. But what he did was probably of more advantage to him. He took several months off in the summer and spent them in Algonquin Park."
  In October 1912 Thomson was first introduced to Dr. James MacCallum, a frequent visitor of the Ontario Society of Artists' (OSA) exhibitions and The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. MacCallum convinced Thomson to leave his position at Rous and Mann and commit to a career in painting. Lawren Harris later recalled Thomson's major developments around this time:
  Thomson began to develop. His work commenced to emerge into the clear Canadian daylight. His work had been tight and sombre, almost a grey monotone in colour. [A. Y.] Jackson's sparkling, vibrant, rich colour opened his eyes, as it did the eyes of the rest of us, and Tom saw the Canadian landscape as he had never seen it before. It amounted to a revelation. From then on nothing could hold him.
  MacCallum offered to cover Thomson's expenses for a year on the promise that he fully committed himself to painting, an offer Thomson eventually accepted after some initial hesitance. MacCallum wrote that when he first saw Thomson's sketches, he recognized their "truthfulness, their feeling and their sympathy with the grim fascinating northland... they made me feel that the North had gripped Thomson as it had gripped me since I was eleven when I first sailed and paddled through its silent places." He further wrote that Thomson's paintings were "dark, muddy in colour, tight and not wanting in technical defects."
  Thomson's ventures to the wilderness of Ontario were major sources of inspiration in his art, writing in a letter to MacCallum that the beauty of Algonquin Park was indescribable. His early works, such as Northern Lake (1912–13) and Evening were not outstanding technically, yet they illustrate a particular talent for composition and colour handling. The sale of the former to the Ontario Government in March 1913 for $250 (equivalent to CAD$5,600 in 2018) allowed him to spend more time in the summer and fall of 1913 sketching. MacCallum described the painting as a "picture [of] one of the small northern lakes swept by a north west wind; a squall just passing from the far shore, the water crisp, sparkingly blue & broken into short, white-caps—a picture full of light, life and vigour." Thomson's sketches from 1913 are often grey, but display greater colour handling than that seen in the earlier sketch of Northern Lake. Most of these sketches are simple with a far off shore. Canvases like Morning Cloud and Moonlight use broken brushwork, a technique he likely learned from MacDonald and Jackson.
caption: Birches, Fall 1913. Hart House, University of Toronto, Toronto
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