Tom Thomson Post 124
A century can bring a lot of change to the landscape. The 1800s were characterized by extensive
clearcutting in the Algonquin forest, destroying habitats that took eons to build.
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Historic Algonquin Park Map showing the additions
over the past century |
In response, Algonquin Park – the oldest provincial park in Canada – was established in 1893. Its mandate was to preserve those habitats and the species in them that were threatened. Over the past century, Algonquin Park has expanded to cover 7,653 square kilometres (2,955 sq mi). The park is a treasure enjoyed by more than 800,000 visitors a year.
The “view from the top of the hill” certainly looked very different back in 1916 when Thomson sat on that bare, rocky hilltop. In the intervening years, the trees have recovered, thus hiding some of the features Tom observed. Natural habitats take even longer to recover. The logging industry continues in about 40 percent of Algonquin. The park was established not to stop logging but to establish a wildlife sanctuary. Agriculture was also excluded to protect the headwaters of the five major rivers which flow from the Park.
The world has also changed in many other ways in the last century. The World Wide Web became available to the public in 1993 followed by Google in 1998. These tools just keep getting better and have become essential in modern society. As a result Creative Scene Investigation often begins with a simple "Google Search" allowing these blogs to build on the knowledge of experts who have worked on similar questions before. The contributions of these experts are essential and always recognized in these blogs. We can learn so much more by working positively together... but I digress... again.
The loggers and the rangers of Algonquin Park did not know what to make of Tom Thomson and his friends when the artists arrived in 1912. Little did they know that the work of these creative souls would brand Algonquin Park. Tom was unable to make much of a living as an artist in 1916 so he became a fire ranger stationed at Achray on Grand Lake in 1916. Tom complained of not painting much that summer as he worked with his partner Ed Godin, an Algonquin Park Ranger.
In a
letter to Dr. James MacCallum dated October 4th, 1916 and sent from Basin Depot. Tom wrote:
"Have done very little sketching this summer as I find that the two jobs don't fit in. It would be great for two artists or whatever you call us but the natives can't see what we paint for. A photo would be great but the painted things are awuful [sic]. When we are travelling two go together one for the canoe and the other the pack and there's no place for a sketch outfit when your fireranging.
We are not fired yet but I am hoping to be put off right away."
Tom did generate a good number of excellent sketches, many of which have become real classics. "View from the Top of a Hill " was one of those to be found on the flip side of the "Yellow Sunset" masterpiece. What was Tom pondering while he brushed oils on that panel? Only a few spindly, stunted birches and maples were left on that hilltop.
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View from the Top of a Hill 1916
Oil on wood 8 3/8 x 10 1/2 in. (21.3 x 26.7 cm)
Tom's Paint Box Size
Verso to 1916.37
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"Climbing the Big Hill across from Achray on Grand Lake" reveals how tenacious Thomson enthusiasts can be when on the trail of a painting location. Diana and Bob McElroy have become Thomson experts over their years of paddling and hiking in Algonquin Park. They are especially knowledgeable about Thomson's works from 1916 when he worked around Grand Lake. The following information is gleaned from their post and used with permission.
Diana and Bob McElroy had come across this lesser-known Thomson painting and thought that the three lakes depicted were Grand Lake, Stratton Lake and Johnston Lake. The best location to view those bodies of water was from the big hill across from Achray on Grand Lake. Paddles in the water and boots on the ground are required to access the location where Tom sat! There was no established trail up that hill so it would be bushwhacking all the way.
They speculated that a trail might have been associated with the old tote road that ran from Grand Lake to the Spectacle Lakes and then south to Basin Depot. Thomson travelled that route regularly on his mail runs to Basin Depot. The double-headed, pale white arrow in the above graphic highlights that route. The top of the big hill could have been just a detour off that trail. As well, Thomson's duties as a fire ranger would probably have taken him regularly to the top of that hill, and others, for a look around in search of smoke from fires. There could have been a path in 1916 but where was it in 2014?
The top of the southeast face of the big hill was surmised to be the painting location. That face is steep and very rugged. The 2014 image to the right depicts the typical struggling vegetation and rocky landscape probably unchanged since 1916 when Thomson climbed those slopes. The likely path to the top started on the northeast side of the hill (
near a currently established campsite).
The "big hill" is central to this story. A photo from the Park archives below looking across Grand Lake in 1933 shows a lot of bare rock and not much soil looking similar to a 2014 photograph taken from the Out Side Inn at Achray.
The McElroys comment:
"The skyline of that big hill has changed very little in the last nearly 100 years - shorter trees of various sizes, with a few taller white pines poking up above. The ground there is mainly solid rock, with a few pockets of organic soil built up slowly over the time since the last ice age. Most of the vegetation is the kind that can tolerate dry conditions and poor soil. The trees are mostly rather stunted and just hanging on. I suspect a lot of them are older than their size might suggest. There are a lot of very sparse areas on the slope, some bare rock, some grass, low bushes, etc. It really isn't all that hard to climb to the view that Tom saw - the main problem is knowing that you have to go over the 'peak' and down a bit to get to the spot."
"Anyway, I would guess that there never was very much prime timber on the hill in Tom's day, or previously, though it does seem to have grown in a little since 1916. He certainly would have had many occasions to observe the hillside from across the lake, whether from the front porch of the Out Side Inn, from the shore, or from a canoe. Plenty of his sketches depict what he would have seen. And since the fire rangers did not have any nearby observation towers at the time, they did take advantage of hilltops with a good view, or even tall trees they could climb to look for smoke in the distance. Tom was probably not the first to go up there."
The current view from Tom's probable painting location was included in the McElroys "Climbing the Big Hill across from Achray on Grand Lake, In search of Tom Thomson". That image is included below.
Looking back, the McElroys think that perhaps the actual viewpoint may have been slightly to the right of where they took the above photo. But still, they were very close.
The McElroys comment:
"The problem, of course, is: where is Johnston Lake? It appears in the painting and on the map, but not in the photograph (even though we know it's there). This highlights a common difficulty in identifying Tom Thomson painting locations: You can no longer see the park as Tom Thomson saw it. The vegetation has changed significantly and most of the old infrastructure has disappeared. Lake levels are often different. Many scenes are no longer viewable and others are hard to recognize. But in spite of all this, many painting locations can be found.
In this case, the pine forests of the area had been extensively harvested in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Johnston Lake was visible from this location in 1916 but the regrowth of the pine forest now hides it from view. (see notes). This is also why the currently visible shape of the near end of Stratton Lake doesn't quite match the painting."
Is our assertion that tree growth in the last 100 years is responsible for "hiding" Johnston Lake reasonable? A simple geometry calculation says yes. The assumed painting location is ~105m above Johnston Lake. The far shore of Johnston Lake is ~2700m distant. The highest elevation point along the line of sight towards the far shore of Johnston Lake is between Grand Lake and Johnston lake and is ~1900m distant. (These distances are horizontal distances.) If we consider two similar triangles sharing a common apex (the far shore of Johnston Lake) and one side being the elevation of Johnston Lake and the other side being along the line of sight, then: x/(2700-1900) = 105/2700 where x is the height of the visual obstruction (ground elevation above Johnston Lake plus tree height) between Grand Lake and Johnston Lake. Solving for x gives ~30m. Consequently, an obstruction ~30m high at this location would just be sufficient to block the view of the far shore of Johnston Lake, which is what our photos suggest is the current situation. The ground elevation at this point is 5 to 10m above Johnston Lake. This gives us a calculated tree height of 20 to 25m, which is reasonable for 100-year-old red and/or white pines. If you further calculate what you could see from the assumed painting location if the area were clear cut and the only obstruction was the 5 to 10m ground rise, then you could almost see the near shore of Johnston Lake (~2200m distant) as well. Consequently, we can confidently assert that the tree cover between Grand and Johnston Lakes determines the visibility of Johnston Lake from this location. Further, we can turn this discussion backwards and assert that this painting provides "painted proof" that the forests around Achray had been largely cleared when Thomson was painting here ~100 years ago.
This discussion is based on the assumption that the painting location was the bare rock area that we visited. This is plausible in that this is a pleasant comfortable location that provides a relatively unobstructed view of the subject scene and it would also have 100 years ago. The very thin to absent veneer of soil at this location precludes local tree growth. However, it is also possible that 100 years ago, the top of the hill was sufficiently denuded of trees due to logging that other locations on the hill would also provide an unobstructed view. (And a higher location would provide a better view of Johnston Lake). This possibility does not negate the conclusion that the painting location was from this hill, but it does add some uncertainty as to the exact location."
The above Note from the McElroys is loaded with great and valuable information. I had to follow the details very carefully to form the thoughts in my mind. A picture can be worth many thousands of words so some of that McElroy knowledge is repeated in the following graphic.
Now for the weather! The slice of sky in this painting may be narrow but it is more than enough.
Tom deliberately included two subtle bands of clouds that stretched across the eastern horizon. The more defined altostratus deformation zone was the trailing edge of the comma head of a departing weather system. The higher and fainter line of ice crystal cirrus was part of the same warm conveyor belt circulation. Such a large, organized and probably old system must follow the westerly jet stream. A high-pressure centre was building across Algonquin Park in the wake of that storm. The absence of cumulus clouds reveals that the air was dry. The sunny conditions were more than warm enough to heat the ground and send surface air parcels buoyantly aloft. Those balloon bubbles of air did not contain sufficient moisture to reach saturation and were unable to result in cumulus clouds.
The green star in the following graphic locates Thomson within the parade of weather systems. Tom was looking east at the trailing edges of the comma head of the warm conveyor belt. The long deformation zones wrapping around the retreating low indicate that the system was large and old. Circulations tend to get larger as they develop and harvest energy from the jet stream as well as the heat and moisture of the atmosphere. At their peak intensity, the energy is concentrated in the cyclonic circulation of an "old cold low".
The cyclonic companion of the warm conveyor belt wraps around the old cold low. That moisture often makes several complete trips around the low. The cloud bands can resemble a scarf wrapping around the old cold low! Each layer of moisture comprising the warm conveyor belt makes its own layer around the cold low. Thomson observed the typical high and mid-level wraps of cirrus and altostratus respectively. The rotating white cylinder in the following graphic is my clunky representation of an old cold low in the conceptual model of the parade of weather systems.
An old cold low crossed Ontario as this post was being prepared and as displayed in the above graphic. The human eye can follow the flow as the air spirals downward along the constant energy surfaces making several cyclonic trips around the old cold low. An earth-bound observer sees the outer edges of that flow as distinct layers of cloud. The real weather gave an excellent view of what the weather might have looked like from space, while Tom painted the distant cloud bands on the eastern horizon from the top of the big hill.
In the high amplitude flow pattern that supports slow-moving cold lows, one can often see one weather system departing on the eastern horizon while the next approaches to the west. This flow pattern is typically described as an Omega Block after the Greek letter that the atmospheric flow resembles. The weather moves very slowly in such a blocking pattern. Such was the case when Tom painted "View from the Top of a Hill". The green star 1 in the following graphic locates Tom looking at the cold low exiting slowly to the east. The yellow star 2 in the graphic positions Tom in the parade of weather looking west to observe the "Yellow Sky" already on the western horizon to be painted that evening at sunset.
The passage of a few hours would move the high-pressure area eastward on the heels of the retreating cold low. The next weather system could have been on the western horizon when Tom was paddling back to the Out Side Inn along the southern shore of Grand Lake. The cirrus and deformation zones of the next warm conveyor belt as described in "
Yellow Sunset" would have been visible in that sunset sky.
Conceptual models of the atmosphere are useful in placing Tom Thomson within the parade of weather systems. The April 3rd, 2024 Omega Block pattern satisfactorily represents the weather slowly crossing Grand Lake while Tom painted on a single wooden panel using both sides to record what he saw.
We have diagnosed that the atmosphere was dry between the departing old cold low and the advancing conveyor belt weather system from that small wafer of sky included in "View from the Top of a Hill". Looking westward that evening, Rayleigh scattering would have eliminated the blue out of the direct beam from the sun. The sunset was yellow in colour. This fact tells us that the atmosphere was not excessively laden with particulates, moisture or volcanic sulphate aerosols which would have resulted in a red sunset sky.
I consulted with my colleague Johnny Met. John agreed that the information teased out of the "View from the Top of a Hill" could improve the "Yellow Sky" diagnosis if they were painted on the same day. Indeed "cirrostratus was coming at Tom" would be the better forecast for "Yellow Sky" based on this new data.
I wonder whether Tom had the day off as Fire Ranger and was exploring the shores of Grand Lake. Perhaps he was "working" and had climbed the big hill to scan the horizon for smoke. The summer of 1916 was parched and forest fires were a threat. World War One had been raging since 1914 and there were concerns of German saboteurs disrupting essential train shipments through the park. Anyway, it would have been fun to climb the hill to get a better view of the lay of the land. Tom was itching to get some painting time and maybe carried his paint box with him!
Tom could have been headed back to the Out Side Inn at Achray in the late afternoon after climbing the big hill and recording "View from the Top of a Hill". Paddling along the south shore of Grand Lake he might have noticed the spectacular sunset and decided he just had to record that sky. But this time the only surface he had was the back of the panel he had used earlier in the day from the top of the hill.
We will never know for sure but the possibilities make for a good story. It could explain why "View from the Top of a Hill" and "Yellow Sunset" were on the same panel and painted from nearby locations. The skies even logically link the two paintings together within the typical progression of weather systems.
As my Thomson friend laments:
"Like so many things, we will never know for sure."
Verso to 1916.37 "
Yellow Sunset" Alternate title: Yellow Sky Spring or Summer 1916 Oil on wood 8 3/8 x 10 1/2 in. (21.3 x 26.7 cm)
Credit line:
- to the National Gallery of Canada, Bequest of Dr. J.M. MacCallum, Toronto, 1944, Accession number4684v
Note that his painting does not bear the Thomson Estate Stamp. Thomson's patron Dr. MacCallum took a fancy to at least one side of the panel. He immediately included the work within his own collection of Thomson's paintings. These paintings were not within the stack of Thomson panels that Harris and MacDonald sorted through in the spring of 1918.
Thomson was obviously happy with "Yellow Sunset" and signed that side of the panel. "View from the Top of a Hill" also displays some wonderful and bold brushwork but is in much need of restoration and respect.
Tom only signed the "Yellow Sunset" side of this panel. He perhaps was not thrilled with his efforts from the top of the big hill. The "View from the Top of a Hill" side was even defaced with black crayon, supposedly by someone at the National Art Gallery. The panel might have ended up in Thomson's campfire if it had not been for the "Yellow Sunset" side. Canadian art could have been deprived of a valuable history lesson. Oh my...
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| The front of "View from the Top of a Hill" is on the left; the back of this painting on the right. |
Both of the above paintings raise another interesting question. The official
catalogue raisonné lists the season as either spring or summer. If these were painted on the same day as surmised, maybe we can do better than that. The McElroy's weighed in on that question:
"There are clues, but some are ambiguous. The ground cover is bright green, which suggests spring or early summer. The reddish leaves could suggest fall, but both maple and oak leaves emerge somewhat red or bronze coloured and gradually change to green as they expand. Although I originally suggested those trees were maples, they might be oaks - looking back at our photos, the deciduous trees at the hilltop currently are red oaks, which are fairly drought tolerant. The area did suffer a significant drought in 2012, which no doubt affected the vegetation (and perhaps that also explains the colours in 1916). We saw a few dead deciduous trees, but I don't know what they were. There were also dead jack pines and (smallish) white pines - the live ones were farther down the slope. The distant forest in the sketch looks green and lush - late spring or into summer. The birch trees in the sketch are leafless, suggesting they are dead - they would be coming out early in the spring and be bright green, or else yellow in the fall. We didn't see any birches up there in 2014.
So, where does this leave us? Pretty much floundering as to the season. Unless the weather analysis provides some clue, we'll have to leave it as undetermined."
The weather does help a bit since cold lows are typically a springtime phenomenon in Ontario. Looking at the flora, I tend to give the lush vegetation the benefit of the doubt. Stressed trees in poor soils and prone to drought at the top of a hill tend to be unreliable witnesses.
If a choice had to be made, I believe the evidence accumulates more on the side of late spring. If only Tom had left a note. We will never know for certain...
Note that Algonquin Park was named a National Historic Site in 1992 in recognition of several heritage values including:
- its role in the development of park management;
- pioneering visitor interpretation programs later adopted by national and provincial parks across the country;
- its role in inspiring artists, which in turn gave Canadians a greater sense of their country;
- and historic structures.
"View from the Top of a Hill" by Thomson summarizes the third bullet in the above list explaining why Algonquin Park is a National Historic Site!
Many interesting stories can be discovered with boots on the ground, open minds and good science. History can be rediscovered and brought to life. As mentioned, this story might be fiction but the science is factual. The contributions of the McElroys to this post have made this one of my favourite Thomson Creative Scene Investigations. I continue to learn from the Thomson experts who have become my friends over the years!
Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,
Phil Chadwick
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