Tom Thomson's "Woods in Winter" 1917

Sometimes the Creative Scene Investigative (CSI) solution is as simple as sketching some lines on a piece of paper and thinking about the obvious facts recorded in the painting. Tom Thomson's "Woods in Winter" painted in the early spring of 1917 is just such an observation of nature. 

Thomson arrived at Mowat Lodge in early April 1917. Winter conditions can be observed in Algonquin right up into May so an observation of snow in April at Mowat was not a rarity. The timing for this weather observation was definitely spring although the conditions certainly looked like winter.

Woods in Winter, Spring 1917
Oil on wood 5 11/16 x 7 7/8 in. (14.5 x 20 cm)
Smaller than Tom's Paint Box Size (8.5 x 10.5 in.)
Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Owen Sound 

The horizon on this painting was at the upper third of the panel but there is still a weather element to the painting. 

The long shadows crawling across the snow banks tell some of the story. The particularly long shadows in the foreground trail across the entire image and do not reveal whether the sunlight was originating from either the right or the left. 

PowerPoint slide from "Tom Thomson Was A Weatherman" 

The limbless pine standing tall at the right third of the panel comes to our rescue. The shadow must start at the base of the pine and that shade stretches to the left. The light clearly must originate from the right with the sun shining on Tom's right shoulder. The many shadows behind that towering pine reveal that the forest was thicker to the right as well. 

As is typical for plein air work, the scene is entirely front-lit. Artists can go blind painting looking into the radiation of the sun, especially over a reflective snowy surface. The illuminated spring vegetation displayed rich and vibrant colours. The opaque clouds were quite bright, and white as well. 

I use the following, simple geometry looking down on the human body to diagnose the illumination of plein air scenes. Thankfully, artists' heads do not swivel like those of an owl. 

This is not rocket science. A simple consideration of the visual clues in the painting can reveal a lot. 

There are five distinct possibilities for illuminating any scene as governed by the passage of time and the apparent sundial movement of the sun. The Earth makes a revolution every day while it orbits the centre of the solar system about 150 million km away. It took a long time for Copernicus and Galileo Galilei to get those concepts accepted. 

The constraints of the front-lit scene, the shadows stretching from right to left and the sun on Tom's right shoulder quickly eliminate two of the five choices (mid-afternoon and sunset). The shadows are very long making the "noon" view unlikely. At midday, the sun is at its highest elevation in the sky and cast the shortest shadows. The sunrise option does not fit the colour of the light illuminating the scene. The direct beam from the rising sun is Rayleigh filtered by a long path through the atmosphere resulting in a yellow hue to the light at dawn. The conclusion is that only a mid-morning time for this painting satisfies all of the constraints. Tom was looking northeasterly around 10 am.

Another bit of CSI deduction relates to the cloud. Even disorganized pieces of opaque altostratus reveal gentle ascending air in the free atmosphere. Rising air is also associated with falling pressures at the surface - a well-known fact to any weather enthusiast with a barometer. Weather systems are always on the move and a low-pressure area was approaching Mowat on that winter-like spring day in 1917. The weather situation was remarkably similar to another painting from April of 1917, Tom Thomson's "Early Spring". In fact, weather can connect one painting to another and perhaps even several others - weather can be the missing link! 

I do not believe this to be a coincidence but rather a typical experience for a plein air artist on a creative roll. It is common for a plein air artist to knock off more than five paintings in a day with each documenting an orientation of the sunlight as displayed in the above diurnal graphic, like the "Stations of the Cross". Even fourteen plein air paintings in a day are easily achievable. I strongly suspect that "Woods in Winter" was painted just before "Early Spring" on the same day, under identical weather conditions. Recall that "Early Spring" was completed around midday. If Tom just stayed in one place, the weather conditions recorded by "Woods in Winter" would have morphed into those of  "Early Spring" by the inevitable approach of the low-pressure area. 

Tom Thomson's painting locations with respect to the weather
associated with the conveyor belt conceptual model for 
"Woods in Winter" at location yellow Star 1
and "Early Spring" at yellow location Star 2. 
Tom did not move while the weather advanced above him.
 “After the Sleet Storm”  might have even been observed
within the warm sector of this storm. 

Upon his death during that summer of 1917, Tom Thomson's "Woods in Winter" passed from his estate to his older sister Louise. Louise was born in 1873 four years before Tom in 1877. Louise related some interesting tales about her younger brother Tom in a letter to Blodwen Davies in 1931. Blodwen Davies (1897-1966) was a Canadian advocate for the Group of Seven and an important biographer for Tom Thomson. Her research preserves some very interesting and authentic insights into the man, his art and his times. (see Louise Henry, Letter to Blodwen Davies, Mar. 11, 1931)

Louise became Mrs. J.G. Henry of Guernsey and then Saskatoon in Saskatchewan but she wanted the art of her brother to return home. "Woods in Winter" was gifted to the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Owen Sound (967.056) in 1967. 

The smaller than typical paint box size of this painting also asks a question - Why? The sketch is smaller than 6 by 8 inches which is significantly smaller than his typical paint box size of 8.5 by 10.5 inches. Were art supplies in that final spring of 1917 in such severe shortage or was that selection intentional? How did Tom hold that tiny panel in his paint box while he worked on it? Without seeing the original panel, I wonder if this was just a scrap of wood from a packing crate that Tom had at his disposal. I have painted on scraps of wood many times but I reveal the reason why.  I do not have those answers for Tom's art story. Maybe someone does. 

"Tom Thomson Was
A Weatherman
 Summary As of Now"
QR Code

As one can see, there is always a story behind the art hanging on the wall of a gallery. With the invention of the world-wide-web and innovative communication technology, these stories can be readily available by scanning a QR Code. The black and white pixel patterns of the QR Code can link to information from any site within the web (even this one), The instantly available background story can supplement the art on the wall. Modern devices can even play that story into your earphones should you be wearing any at the time. I have done this for my own art when it was hung in galleries. In addition to names, my paintings are also numbered sequentially and the weather is an important part of each story. As a result, the weather linkage between consecutive paintings is easily deciphered within my own catalogue raisonné and not open to the conjecture like that proposed above. 

Sometimes it is just as revealing and enjoyable to simply gaze at the pigments and listen to what the brush strokes of the artist have to say.  You do not need to be an art historian or a meteorologist to really appreciate art! Sometimes it helps to appreciate the background story though. 

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.