Tom Thomson's "Cold Spring in Algonquin Park" 1917

Tom often did not need to travel very far before inspiration struck. I suspect that his view is from the front yard of the Mowat Lodge in the spring of 1917. The biting bugs emerged on the May 2- 4 weekend of that year. One can be certain that Tom stopped plein air painting then. 

Cold Spring in Algonquin Park Spring 1917
Oil on wood panel 8 1/2 x 10 1/2 in. (21.6 x 26.7 cm)
Tom's Paint Box Size 

The horizon is below the midpoint of this paint box panel. Tom was painting looking easterly in the mid-afternoon hours. The sun would have felt wonderful on his right shoulder. The mild southerly breezes would have made it a perfect time to be outside, enjoying life after a long winter in Toronto. But how do we know this? Please let me explain. 

The cumulus clouds were front-lit by the afternoon sun. Cumulus clouds of this size take some time to develop under the weaker illumination of the spring sun suggesting that the afternoon timing for the painting is accurate. The upwind flanks of these cumuli of various sizes were all angled upward and to the left. The geometry of the scene as depicted below only allows one orientation. The elongated north-south orientation of Canoe Lake favours wind directions along that axis. In this case, the winds had to be southerly. This analysis is supported by the drifting ice accumulating on the north-western shore of the lake. 

The bases of the cumulus clouds are not rigidly flat indicating that turbulent mixing with gusty winds also played an important role in lifting moist parcels of air from the ground up to the lifted condensation level of the air mass. There was probably abundant moisture on the ground given the precipitation that must have fallen with the passage of the warm front. 

The geometry of the painting including my
water-marked Canoe Lake Map on the right. 

The blue sky poking through the holes between the cumulus clouds allows some refinement in the story. The warm conveyor belt is often cloud-free far south of the warm front. Overcast layers of cloud can be expected ahead of the warm front. The lift required to produce such cloud layers is often missing further to the south within the warm sector of the storm. The absence of clouds suggests that the warm front of the conveyor belt conceptual model, was far to the north when Tom started to paint. The cold front had not yet arrived and could be minutes or hours to the west. Tom was enjoying the opportunity to paint within the storm's warm sector. 

The presence of ice chunks on the lawn in front of Mowat Lodge suggests that this was a rather large and slow-moving spring storm.  Those ice pieces could have been pushed onshore by strong easterly winds which are not typical given the shape and north-south orientation of Canoe Lake. The cold conveyor belt that would have been required to create such strong winds given the limited fetch, must have been strong. As a result, the approaching storm was either more intense or slower moving than average. The science of this deduction may be found in greater detail in "Weather Lessons for Everyone from the Cold Conveyor Belt Wizard". Those easterly winds within the earth-frame of reference pushed those chunks of ice to the western shore of Canoe Lake. The southerly winds in the warm sector of the storm then started to shove the ice along the shore and up into Potter Creek for Tom to observe and paint. 

But there is more.. and thank you to my Thomson friend for encouraging the inclusion of some more science. I quite agree with the suggestion that the dark blue streak in the middle left was the ice-free current and outflow from Potter Creek. This fact points to another discovery that the rest of the surface of the lake that Tom painted had to be a layer of mushy ice, saturated with water - the kind of ice that you are guaranteed to fall through. The colour Tom used to depict that slushy surface was enough to deduce what was obvious at the time.  But also consider that if it was so windy as revealed by the clouds, why then were there no waves on the lake? The answer must be that, unlike the fast, open water of Potter Creek, Canoe Lake was ice covered! 

That slushy surface was still near freezing and had not warmed to that critical temperature of about plus 4 °C (39.2 °F) when water is most dense and actually sinks to the depths. Oxygen and nutrient-rich surface water sinks and is replaced by warmer water from below. The lake water flips and mixes and has a great positive impact on nature. The ice can vanish in a matter of hours during the flip. 

The strong southerly winds and the push from the ice pack are the forces that will shove that slushy ice up along the sloped shore. Water drains from the slush when it is heaped above the water line. The remaining crystals are actually quite reflective, bright and white - like diamonds. In fact, we observe this sequence of events every spring when the ice transforms and vanishes from Singleton Lake - signalling that the male loon would soon return and it was time to launch the nesting platform. 

Tom certainly knew what he was recording for prosperity when he stood on the lawn of Mowat Lodge! Spring was on the way. The buds were starting to swell on the saplings in the foreground.  Tom was revelling with the indications that spring had finally arrived. One can almost hear the arrival of the spring birds along with the warm conveyor belt of the storm.

The title assigned to this painting is a bit misleading as this particular day would have been relatively mild. The previous day would have been windy and chilly under the spell of the cold conveyor belt. This pleasant turn in the weather explains why Tom was painting en plein air after being confined to the interior of Mowat Lodge where he sometimes painted in the dining room.  Given the strength of the conveyor belt pattern, there could have still been a taste of winter to be delivered behind the approaching cold front and let's assume that justifies the name of the painting. 

Creative Scene Investigation really benefits from being able to visualize the weather in time and space. The process is like playing a movie in your mind and something that I have always daydreamt about especially when I was a Severe Weather Meteorologist. I could envision the forecast in my mind's eye.

"Cold Spring in Algonquin Park Spring 1917"
as it would have appeared in
Tom Thomson's paint box

The back of the panel has an inscription in ink: "Sketch by Tom Thomson / -1917- Consolidated Bathurst, Montreal".  I wonder what the back of the painting actually looks like? A picture can be worth a thousand words and a description of the annotations often just confuses me and probably others as well. 

The lower right on the front of the painting bears the inscription "TT". There is no indication of who put that mark there but that dark smudge on the lawn was unlikely to be the work of Tom. The front of the painting needs to remain the special domain of the artist. 

If I am permitted to guess, I suspect that the "TT" was added by J.E.H. MacDonald in the spring of 1918 when he and Lawren Harris met in the Studio Building. Tom's paintings from the Shack had been stacked in the Studio Building. Harris and MacDonald planned to sort through Tom's art, make comments on the back and distribute what they felt were the best examples of his genius. MacDonald might have been experimenting with how best to identify and authenticate a Thomson painting. MacDonald designed the Estate Stamp that was later used to distinguish Thomson's unsigned art. The stylized "TT" inscribed on "Cold Spring in Algonquin Park Spring 1917" bears a remarkable resemblance to the design of the Estate Stamp. 

The Tom Thomson Estate Stamp designed
by J.E.H. MacDonald and bequeathed to the
National Gallery of Canada by Dr. James MacCallum in 1944

You might notice that I use "front" and "back" to describe the faces of my art. The front is the pictorial brushwork story told in tones, shapes and pigments. I typically sign my name inconspicuously in the lower right. I have been using toothpicks and nails to scratch my name in the wet oils and I dot the "i" with red. The back of the painting is where I record the name of the work and some of the story behind its creation along with my complete signature. Simple yet complete with no ambiguity.

"Front" and "back" are really simple terms using English, the language of science around the globe and the "new Latin". I was always impressed during my travels with COMET and NOMEK how meteorologists could flip to English during presentations and I wished that I could speak Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic and a host of other languages, especially outside the classroom. I took math and physics in High School and unfortunately, there was no time for the Latin class in that schedule. I can still very much appreciate how and why art curators prefer to use the more cryptic "recto" and "verso" borrowed from Latin. The front or face of a single sheet of paper or the right-hand page of an open book is called the recto. The back or underside of a single sheet of paper or the left-hand page of an open book is known as the verso. 

Cold Spring in Algonquin Park Spring 1917
Oil on wood panel 8 1/2 x 10 1/2 in. (21.6 x 26.7 cm)
Tom's Paint Box Size 

But I digress... This painting did indeed go to Elizabeth, Tom Thomson’s eldest sister upon his passing. Elizabeth's husband was Thomas “Tom” J. Harkness who was appointed by the Thomson family to look after the affairs of Tom’s estate. T. J. and Elizabeth lived in Annan, Ontario, just east of Owen Sound. The painting was then passed to Gardner Thomson and then into a private collection in Toronto. That collector passed the painting on to Consolidated Bathurst of Montreal and that is where it can possibly be viewed but only by the privileged few. 

I include a photo of the back of each painting in my catalogue raisonné. There is nothing hidden or cryptic in the details written on the back of each painting. Sometimes I record the key elements of the story behind the painting. Often I include some weather details if I feel that they are important. I have even scraped some paint from my palette as a temporary cache left on the stretcher bars just in case I might need it. The information about where the paintings go is also included with the story of each. Of course, that information can only be completed up to the current time. All of these details are also included in a numbered and chronological web page which is the modern version of the "recipe cards" that I used when I started oils in 1967. Technology can be a good thing. 

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.