The uninspiring name assigned to this painting by either Lawren Harris or J.E.H. MacDonald in the spring of 1918 is virtually identical to "Tom Thomson's Spring Sunset, Algonquin Park Spring 1916". Only the word "sunset" was removed since this painting was completed near midday. Tom's friends were sifting through the tall stack of Tom's paintings that had been removed from the Shack after he died in July 1917.
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| Patron Dr. James MacCallum funded the Thomson Estate Stamp which was designed by MacDonald |
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. This painting is another from that tall pile and displays the distinctive "TT Estate Stamp" on the bottom, front left corner. Some of the paint has since flaked off the wooden panel.
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| Spring, Algonquin Park, Spring 1916 Oil on wood panel 8 3/8 x 10 1/2 in. (21.3 x 26.7 cm) Tom's paint box size |
There is certainly a story behind this work and it was indeed a challenge to discover. If only Thomson had left a few hints we might have avoided a lot of uncertainly. What might have been obvious in 1916 has been cloaked by an ever-changing landscape in the past century. In fact, this painting is all about the Gilmour Lumber Company and the weather..
The Gilmour Lumber Company was one of the giants of Canadian logging. The company started humbly in Glasgow, Scotland during the 1790s with Allan Gilmour Senior. The company flourished! By the 1840s they commanded one of the largest shipping operations in the world with a fleet of 130 vessels. In 1852, the company was still successfully expanding and they constructed a sawmill at Trent Port (Trenton) along the Bay of Quinte.
Gilmour Mill in Trenton was simply huge! The March 1888 issue of Canada Lumberman included the following comment, "You think you have big mills in the United States, but the best of them dwindle into comparative insignificance alongside of the Gilmour mill, which has a capacity of 900,000 feet per day...". The supply of trees to feed this mill was Algonquin but after 40 years, they were running out of wood. The Algonquin Highland Forest was a prized timber and the Ontario government put up for auction in October 1892. Rich resources available to the highest bidder. David Gilmour was the biggest spender purchasing 225 square kilometres of land in the Canoe and Joe Lake region. The consensus by the other bidders was that he seriously overpaid for those timber rights.
Four years later, David Gilmour and his brother Allan decided to construct a mill on Canoe Lake in the spring of 1896. Meanwhile, John Booth's Ottawa, Arnprior & Parry Sound Railway would soon reach Canoe Lake. A rail spur was constructed from the Mowat Mill to the Booth rail station just 2-kilometres to the north. This rail spur line allowed lumber to be transported either west to Parry Sound or east to the Ottawa River.
The new company town at Canoe Lake was named "Mowat" after a politician of the day. About 500 workers plus family lived in the village enjoying a hospital, horse stables, a warehouse, cookhouse, storehouses, offices, houses, boarding houses and a cemetery. David Gilmour also constructed two summer homes on an island (which became known as Gilmour Island) one mile from the shores of Mowat. The new lumber mill was charging full steam ahead in the spring of 1897.
That Canoe Lake Mill would survive only five seasons. The Gilmour Lumber Company incurred big debts and Canada was coming out of a depression. The mill closed in September 1901 and everyone returned to Trenton. The company would catastrophically implode away over the next four years. In 1905 David Gilmour moved his family to Buffalo, New York, where he purchased a door factory. In 1909 the big sawmill on the shores of the Trent River and the Bay of Quinte was torn down. The Gilmour Lumber Company was a part of history.
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| The direction of view in the photograph including the white-tail deer is suggested on the above maps dating from 1917 and 1921. |
Tom Thomson started exploring the area in 1912 about a decade after the Canoe Lake Mill closed. By then Shannon Fraser and his wife Annie had started Mowat Lodge based on the remaining buildings left at the village. Tom had a place to stay that even came with home-cooked meals if he wished. There are many stories to tell but I will stick to the art.
Tom Thomson made a stop in Huntsville at the home of Winifred Trainor in mid-March 1916. Tom was on his way to Algonquin Park. He would stay at Canoe Lake until mid-April when he would be visited by Lawren Harris, Lawren's cousin Chester Harris and Dr. MacCallum. Tom probably painted "Spring, Algonquin Park" either in late March or early April 1916. Tom would head to Achray on Grand Lake later in May to work the summer as a Forest Ranger.
It was a sunny and pleasantly warm day for early spring when Tom painted. The sum would have felt delicious on his back and right shoulder as he looked out across the desolation of the chip yard left over from the failed Gilmour Lumber Company. Four years of intensive logging and lumbering can brutally destroy a landscape.
The marshy flat was devoid of trees and filled with wood debris. Aspen are the first trees to pioneer such a ravaged environment. The trembling aspen that stood on the edge of the marsh were sprouting their spring catkins. Aspen actually spread fastest from their roots but still produce seeds and white silky stands for reproduction.
My Thomson friend remarks: "Trembling aspen do start early in spring, and put out the catkins before the leaves appear - that, along with their almost white bark, gives them their ghostly appearance. That Tom depicted them as completely white, the leaves must not yet have emerged, so not much trembling would have been going on, even in a lively wind. I can't help mentioning that they are sometimes called 'mother-in-law's tongue', since the slightest breeze sets the leaves to rustling."
The stem of the leaves of the trembling aspen is flattened along its entire length, perpendicular to the leaf blade. The flattened ribbon-like stem encourages the leaves to quake or tremble in the slightest breeze.
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| A stand of ghostly white trembling aspen in late April on the shore of the Ottawa River is very similar to what Tom would have witnessed at Mowat in mid-April (inset image) - the seasons being more advanced to the southwest. |
The warm day over the barren terrain would have been perfect for dust devils. Tom did include the cumulus clouds revealing that buoyant bubbles of air were indeed rising from the desolate chip yard. Tom had painted a tornado before (see "Tom's Tornado") and possibly would have had an eye open for a dust devil. These swirling vortexes only require strong daytime heating over a low-albedo (not reflective) surface. Clouds are not a necessity.
If there had been a dust devil in that unstable spring air mass, Tom did not include it in his plein air painting. What we do know is that the wind shaping the cumulus was blowing from right to left. Bands of distant stable altostratus clouds were stretching along a deformation zone on the higher horizon. To discover more about this painting, we would need to know Tom's direction of view.
There are two options for the direction of view based on the three hills that Tom included in his painting from the Mowat Chip Yard. The following Option One looks westerly from north of Mowat Lodge. There are indeed three hills that can be inferred from terrain features that match what Tom recorded in his painting. This direction would require that the cumulus-level wind was almost northerly.
Sadly, Tom did not leave us with any other clues. I am not certain which option is correct and it really does not matter much. I favour Option Two as that allows the cumulus-level wind to have more of an easterly component.
A closer examination of that portion of the Conveyor Belt Conceptual Model is found below. Every weather system is different in the details. It is quite possible that there would be minimal cloud far in advance of the low-pressure area - just as Tom did not include in his painting. Dust devils do not require cloud or even low-level veering of the winds although the proximity of the surface warm front can be helpful to encourage them to spin up.
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| Spring, Algonquin Park, Spring 1916 as it would have appeared in Tom Thomson's Paint Box. |
Inscription recto:
- l.l., estate stamp
Inscription verso (an image would save a lot of words and be much clearer):
- sketch, in graphite, (of tents and panels laid on them to dry);
- c., estate stamp;
- u.r.q., in black ink, S.B.;
- u.r.q., below S.B., in ink, T-T-26;
- c.r., in black, Sketch #24;
- l.r.q., J+H; l.l.q., in graphite, 12_ / M. Thomson (circled);
- u.l.q., in graphite, reserved/Studio Bldg. (circled);
- l.c., round stamp, illegible writing along the top, along the bottom "Lacolle, PQ..." (stamp is upside down in faded black ink)
- Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston (AE 00-126)
Provenance:
- Estate of the artist
- Elizabeth Thomson Harkness, Annan and Owen Sound
- Laing Galleries, Toronto
- Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston (AE 00-126). Presented by Queen's Art Foundation, 1941
- T-T-26 refers to the number of the work on a list made by Archie Laing, G. Blair Laing’s father.
This painting currently resides in the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, part of Queen's University right across from Ban Righ Hall. Linda and I had "Meal Tickets" and that was our favourite dining hall. We are both Queen's Alumni graduating in 1976. My Bachelor of Science in Physics is richly applied in these investigations delving into the art and science of Tom Thomson. Linda's Bachelor of Commerce degree allows me to paint, write and paddle - I even had an apiary for a while. In many ways, life and memories can come full circle with the past.
Somehow the simple name "Spring, Algonquin Park" does not do justice to the remarkable story behind this plein air observation of nature.
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.
PSS: Should you wish to have Creative Scene Investigation applied to one of Thomson's works that I have not yet included in this Blog, please let me know. It may already be completed but not yet posted. In any event, I will move your request to the top of the list. If you made it this far, thanks for reading!
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