I suspect that Tom Thomson was a morning person. His art reveals him as a "Let's get up and make something of the day" kind of guy. Why get up so early with the sun? This painting simply called "Morning" perhaps by default, reveals those answers.
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| Morning - Summer 1915 Oil on composite wood-pulp board or book binders' board 8 1/2 x 10 5/8 in, Tom's Paint Box Size |
Someone wrote “Morning” on the back of this sketch in ink and it might have even been Tom himself. I strongly suspect that Tom was just noting when he painted that sketch and did not intend a name for this little masterpiece. That single word used as a title is laconic in the extreme, especially when applied to a work of such stunning beauty and science. In any event, Tom was a man of few words and this two-syllable label stuck. His painting gives you all the reasons that you need to be a morning person.
the storm of the previous day was safely exiting to the east; the sun had not yet cleared the eastern horizon; the air was fresh, dry and cool; the northwesterly winds were keeping the biting bugs at bay; the clouds were making all kinds of interesting shapes in the sky; the spring air was full of life and sounds; there was probably coffee or tea brewing on the campfire;
might as well paint as the fishing would be poor behind the cold front; what else could you ask for but be alive at such a sunrise?
Bless Tom for helping out with the timing of this painting. This simple fact makes the application of Creative Scene Investigation (CSI) that much simpler and more certain. CSI is what allowed me to deduce all of the above and more since I was not there standing at Tom’s shoulder. Of course, I am guessing about the coffee but that is OK to inject humour sometimes.
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| PowerPoint Slide from Tom Thomson Was A Weatherman. Imagine the symbols and features sliding into the screen as each piece of evidence is revealed and discussed. The symbols vanish when I move on to the next feature to discuss. My PowerPoint presentation was huge... |
Please let me explain the CSI steps...
Tom was looking easterly before the sun was able to climb above the horizon. The sun was certainly behind the purple hills in the distance as the horizon is brightest there. The crepuscular rays also confirm this. The crepuscular rays do not diverge very much so Tom is looking upward at the “train track shadows” in the morning sky. If the sun was behind the clouds, the crepuscular rays would diverge much more as if you were at the same level as the train track and looking directly toward the oncoming train. The parallel nature of the crepuscular rays confirms that the sun must still be below the horizon.
Crepuscular rays or “
God rays” are shafts of sunlight that appear to radiate from the point in the sky where the sun is located. These rays which stream through gaps in clouds or other objects are shafts of sunlit air separated by darker-shadowed regions. The apparent divergence of these streams of sunlit air is a perspective effect like that experienced with train tracks. The name comes from the Latin word "crepusculum" which means twilight since these shafts of light are best viewed when the sun is low over the horizon – at sunrise or sunset.
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| The accompanying time series of actual crepuscular rays looking east from Watershed Farm at the crest of the Oak Ridges Moraine confirms Thomson's view with the sun at or just below the horizon - left image |
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| "Morning" spring 1915 Tom Thomson |
Daytime heating cannot explain the stratocumulus so it must be purely the result of the turbulent mixing of the strong, overnight, northerly surface winds. Strong and gusty winds mix the moisture from the ground upward and in this case, high enough to reach the lifted condensation level for the air mass. This fact is confirmed by the strong wave action which is unusual for dawn before the sun has cleared the horizon.
The only way one can keep the night-time radiational inversion from establishing itself is to have strong cold air advection in the wake of a cold front and a low-pressure area. Generally, northerly winds bring cold air and southerly winds usher in the warmth. There are of course unusual exceptions to every rule but this is still a great place to start.
The previous day was warmer, stormy and probably dominated by rain as is typical with a springtime low-pressure area. The rainfall from the previous day must have been significant to provide the moisture that was mixed upward through turbulence to form those stratocumulus clouds. The layered cirrus and altostratus clouds on the eastern horizon were within the deformation zone that wrapped around the retreating low-pressure area. The typical deformation zone that embraces the trailing edge of a low-pressure area was also discussed in "Tom Thomson’s Sketch The Morning Cloud 1913". The wind and the sky puzzle pieces fit together very well.
Note how the sky colours are not the deep orange or red of a setting sun. This is an independent piece of evidence that confirms a morning painting as opposed to an evening plein air sketch - even if Tom had not told us already. The morning atmosphere tends to have less dust and other pollutants than the evening atmosphere. Contaminants from the earth’s surface are mixed upward into the planetary boundary layer after a day of wind and perhaps also by daytime, convective thermals. Atmospheric dust scatters the shorter wavelengths out of the direct beam from the sun leaving light that is rich in longer wavelength oranges and reds.
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| "Morning" backlit forest showing paint loaded, brush strokes |
Finally, this is certainly a spring painting as opposed to "summer" as listed in the official catalogue. There was no colour on the distant shore except for the dark green of the coniferous forest. There were no green leaves on the deciduous trees. The backlit shore was devoid of colour and clearly not the subject of Tom's interest.
It was going to be a beautiful day – a great day to paint after a day or two of being confined within a wet tent.
The following image of "Morning" reveals the rich, impasto texture of Tom's 1915 and later works.
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| Detailed Three-Dimensional Scan of "Morning" and the surface is even more textured than the photograph can possibly reveal. |
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Back of "Morning" - Labelled to right. Inscription recto: l.r., estate stamp in ink; in ink by artist?, Morning / Tom Thomson; in ink, T-T-39; in graphite, No. 21 Mrs. Harkness; AYJ; SB; in graphite, Not for Sale; in black paint?, sketch #15 Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Owen Sound (967-040) My observation is that AYJ is certainly for Alexander Young Jackson but "SB" is the boldest font on the back and it is unexplained? A.Y. Jackson would have confirmed this as Thomson's work. Might SB denote the Studio Building? |
My Thomson friend captures the genius of Tom Thomson in a single paragraph:
"Thinking about the speed at which some of the phenomena Thomson depicted in this and other sketches would progress, I am always impressed by how well he captured them. He had such an amazing perception of colour, along with the ability to put it down on his panels rapidly and yet not with the appearance of rushing. His memory of what he was seeing was also amazing, allowing him to capture it as it changed in front of him."
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| The Shack circa 1915 - Tom's Home and Studio |
Upon his passing, "Morning" appropriately went Tom's eldest sister Elizabeth who was married to Tom J. Harkness, the executor of the estate. It was later purchased by D.I. McLeod in 1935 who gifted it to the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Owen Sound in 1967. There is an interesting story behind every painting if we only take the time to look.
Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,
Phil Chadwick
PS: Tom Thomson Was A Weatherman - Summary As of Now contains all of the entries to date.
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