Tom Thomson's Yellow Sunset, Spring or summer 1916

 Tom Thomson Post 123

It is best to start the Creative Scene Investigation with established facts. This builds the case on a defensible, solid foundation! My Thomson friends familiar with the Grand Lake area graciously provide these truths in the case of Tom Thomson's "Yellow Sunset" based on boots-on-the-ground investigations. 

Yellow Sunset, Spring or Summer 1916,
Alternate title: Yellow Sky
Oil on wood 8 3/8 x 10 1/2 in. (21.3 x 26.7 cm)
Tom's Paint Box Size, Catalogue 1916.37

The alternate title of "Yellow Sky" is interesting. It has been demonstrated in this series of blogs that many of the Thomson "sunset" paintings were actually sunrises. Tom was a morning person and liked to get an early start on the day. Perhaps Tom's friends Harris and MacDonald who were responsible for attributing names to most of his works in the spring of 1918 were getting a bit nervous by the vast number of late-day paintings. In this situation, they apparently suggested a safe alternative and noncommittal name "Yellow Sky". They need not have worried. 

My Thomson friends have located the painting locations of both "Yellow Sunset" and "View from the Top of a Hill". Thomson used the same wooden panel to record both paintings in 1916. The following maps concentrate on the painting location of "Yellow Sunset".

Whether Tom was floating in his canoe or sitting on the rocky shoreline is uncertain. My Thomson friend observes: 

"The shore is quite steep and rocky and there are not many spots that would be even remotely comfortable to sit. It does look like a nice calm evening, so maybe the canoe option is at least possible.  We lined up the scene by finding a view where the end of the point was directly below the peak of the big hill."

After establishing the location and direction of view, I reached out to my friend and colleague Johnny Met for a weather observation based on  "Yellow Sunset". I have known Johnny for most of my meteorological career and he has never let me down! He brings a lifetime of experience to each and every question that might be asked. 

"It is the end-of-the-day painting of a high-pressure scenario. It would go well on my wall celebrating my weather observing career. I would call it twilight time.  The visibility is really sharp. In a flat area, the horizon would have been visible. I am expecting a bright planet, maybe Venus or Mars, to appear. Because it is looking northwest, it must be late May or early June. The diurnal lift has ended, and the cumulus clouds of the day have flattened.  A little aside, as a rookie, I needed help when to record cumulus and change it to stratocumulus. The background whiteness of the sky indicates that the sunset has occurred and that a twilight time of maybe 20 minutes is occurring. The darkness of the hills means it is dark over there.  Tomorrow, it will be generally sunny with a few fair-weather cumulus clouds and light winds.    Johnny Met."

Johnny's forecast could be absolutely correct but I wondered about the sky's grey colour, especially to the south (left). The blue of a clear sky might be tinted by thin cirrostratus, which would considerably change the forecast for the next day. 

Cirrostratus is often overlooked! Thin and high cirrus cloud is translucent. Most people do not even see it! Cirrus is never opaque and does not become darker in the central mass of the cloud when it is backlit like other clouds including stratocumulus. The last rays of white sunlight not following a long atmospheric path can reach those high ice crystals. The white light would be Mie scattered forward by the large ice crystals as seen in Tom's observation. Recall that beams of sunlight following long trajectories lower in the atmosphere have the blue component "Rayleigh scattered" out of the beam. Only longer wavelength yellow and red light is left to illuminate the scene as painting in "Yellow Sunset".

Cirrus and cirrostratus would suggest that a warm conveyor belt was approaching. I often use the phrase "cirrostratus coming at us" to describe an approaching conveyor belt weather system. That science is represented in many places within "The Art and Science of Phil the Forecaster" blogs. The entry Wind Waves and Swells and Lines in the Sky is as good as any but there are many others... If there was a halo around the sun the following day, Mother Nature would have selected the warm conveyor belt solution. Only cirrus will cast a 22-degree radius halo. Haloes are described in many blog entries but most recently in "Tom Thomson's Moonlight Over Canoe Lake". 

The opposing options of a fair weather day from Johnny Met's observation or a mid-latitude storm based on the hint of grey in Tom's "Yellow Sunset" is an example of typical content for our "Fireside Chats" that we held at least a couple of times every shift. There was no crackling campfire or marshmallows in the Weather Centre - just a team of like-minded meteorologists providing a service. The question would be readily resolved at the Weather Centre by looking at satellite imagery or weather observations from upstream locations. Those options are not available if all we have is Tom's painting. 

The other interesting feature of Tom's painting is a faint white line on the distant shore. This is sun glint from the calm water and results from the increasingly large water surface area subtended by the artist’s eye as you look at those reflective, glancing angles. Tom's vantage was very low - perhaps even from his canoe, so Tom painted the maximum amount of reflected light possible. A graphic from my "Tom Thomson Was A Weatherman" presentation might help to explain this concept of light reflected at glancing angles from distant water surfaces. In this case, Hill 2 blocked most of the light from reaching the lake surface.

The PowerPoint animations of this slide are complicated with arrows and interactions whizzing about. It shows that the viewer sees more surface area at a glancing angle to the water. The larger 

viewing area reflecting more light to your eye explains the bright line that Thomson frequently observed and painted. Reflection greatly exceeds refraction at these glancing angles as well. Refraction of light dominates reflection when the viewer looks more directly down into the water and can see the bottom. 

I wonder if the ripple in the south basin of Grand Lake might have been caused by an easterly breeze. If so, that would be a bit of evidence supporting the "cirrostratus coming at us" diagnosis of Tom's sunset sky.

Uncharacteristically, Thomson actually signed this plein air painting. Perhaps Tom signed the panel as a favour to his patron Dr. J.M. MacCallum who took a fancy to this particular weather observation. 

As far as it is known, the panel containing "Yellow Sunset" and "View from the Top of a Hill" has not been split.  That is unfortunate, as it would be instructional to see them side by side. The thought of taking a cutting device to separate the front from the back of that panel would scare the "heebie-jeebies" out of me although similar operations have been done before on Tom's art. 

My Thomson friend observes:

"We can only guess at the story behind the panel. Given the rough shape the "View from the Top of a Hill" is in, we suspected Tom did not think all that highly of it, and perhaps, needing a panel for "Yellow Sunset", just turned over what was handy and painted on that.  Perhaps they were both painted on the same day and that was the only panel he had with him.  After Tom's death, it went to MacCallum and then to the National Gallery and there it has stayed."

This sequence of events suggests that Thomson painted "View from the Top of a Hill" first. Even a desperate artist with nil supplies would be hesitant to flip over the stunningly beautiful "Yellow Sunset" and brush thick oils on the back of that panel!

Perhaps Thomson once again has the final word without saying anything. Tom did not sign  "View from the Top of a Hill"!

As my Thomson friend summarizes: 

"Like so many things, we will never know for sure." 

Tom might have been heading back to the Outside Inn at Achray that evening. Paddling along the south shore of Grand Lake he witnessed a spectacular sunset and decided that he just had to paint that sky. But this time the only surface he had might have been 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 it makes for a good story. 

Given the rugged and inhospitable shoreline, Tom was likely painting from his canoe that evening in 1916 when he observed "Yellow Sunset". A 1914 photo by Arthur Lismer included above shows Tom possibly painting from his canoe. Tom might have just been paddling in that image - especially given the raised orientation of his left arm. Tom was right-handed. If Tom was painting his right hand would be raised to the panel. This also assumes that Tom had a paint box poised on his lap and his left hand might be raised to steady it. It is an interesting picture; again, we will never know what Tom was doing for certain.  It is a fair representation of how Tom would have looked while painting "Yellow Sunset". 

Inscription recto: 

• l.r., TOM THOMSON  (something Thomson rarely did on a plein air painting unless asked to do so, like Daphne Crombie and perhaps Ernest Freure among a very few.)

Inscription verso: 

• another sketch, possibly of Aura Lee Lake in spring; 
• u.l., in black crayon, 74 National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (4684) 

Note that the above Inscription Verso is copied directly from the official Tom Thomson Catalogue Raisonné  entry for "Yellow Sunset" 1916 (1916.37). The comment "another sketch, possibly of Aura Lee Lake in spring " is only found in the "Tom Thomson Catalogue Raisonné, Researched and written by Joan Murray".  The comment is not written on the back (verso) of  "Yellow Sunset". 

The following image is linked as "Additional Images" from "Yellow Sunset"  and is titled simply as "Yellow Sunset, Spring or summer 1916 (1916.37). Verso".  There is no listing for "View from the Top of a Hill" in the official Tom Thomson Catalogue Raisonné although it can be found on the website of the National Gallery of Canada. The details are included in the following graphic. 

A picture is worth a thousand words. I always include an image of the back of paintings within my Catalogue Raisonné.  

The Creative Scene Investigation "Tom Thomson's View from the Top of a Hill 1916" conclusively proved that the painting was done on the "big hill" overlooking Grand Lake, Stratton Lake and Johnston Lake.  "View from the Top of a Hill" was definitely not "another sketch, possibly of Aura Lee Lake in spring". 

The author and contributors to "Tom Thomson Was A Weatherman" wished to correct some errors and set the official record straight with regards to "View from the Top of the Hill". This painting found on the back of "Yellow Sunset" should not have been dismissed. There was also a lot of interesting science and history to discover from both sides of this panel. This also explains why "Tom Thomson's Aura Lee Lake, Spring 1916" is also the subject of a Creative Scene Investigation.  

Provenance: 

• Dr. J.M. MacCallum, Toronto 
• National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (4684). Bequest of Dr. J.M. MacCallum, Toronto, 1944

The accuracy of the Creative Scene Investigations hinges critically on the fact that Thomson painted pretty much exactly what he saw. Tom did not make stuff up or invoke his artistic licence excessively. My Thomson friends who have hiked and paddled extensively make the following observation:

"In every case where we have identified a Tom Thomson painting location, he has not moved things around or distorted the relative sizes of landscape features.  What he did do quite often was to change the aspect ratio - e.g. make the hills taller in relation to the width of the view (see the Jack Pine sketch for an example; also Aura Lee Lake).  I think this may have been due to the proportions of the panels he used for sketches.  Looking at the actual views, many of the sketches would have been mostly sky and water if he had kept the heights of hills, etc. in exact proportion to reality, so he squeezed things horizontally to get it all in.  The scenes are still quite recognizable and it is possible to match up the landscape features one by one."

"Amen" is all I need to say to this excellent observation by my Thomson friends...

Tom was overly depreciating of his art. "Lawren Harris recalled that Thomson, full of scorn at one of his own thickly-painted canvases, sat opposite and flicked burnt matches at it." Harris most likely observed Tom flipping burning matches at his wet oil paintings during their camping time together in the last two weeks of April 1916. 

How many paintings like "View from the Top of a Hill" ended up in Thomson's campfire creating beautifully coloured flames for the last time. Tom signed and was proud of "Yellow Sunset" and otherwise, "View from the Top of a Hill" would probably have displayed the colours of those oils in flames and not in the National Gallery of Canada.

Many interesting stories can be discovered with boots on the ground, open minds and some science. History can be rediscovered and brought to life. The deeper one investigates, the more there is to find. Life is good!

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.