The next painting was anticipated to follow in the series of Creative Scene Investigations (CSI) from the1916 when Tom Thomson was a fire ranger based at Achray on Grand Lake. Tom was able to create some masterworks while fishing and painting with friends in the spring of 1916. It is also thought that Tom found time to paint in the autumn after the fire ranger job was winding down. Tom was able to mix some painting time in with his fire ranger duties but he lamented that it was not nearly enough. Tom wrote in a letter to his patron Dr MacCallum sent from Basin Depot on October 4th, 1916:
"Have done very little sketching this summer as I find that the two jobs don’t fit in."
Earlier in the same letter Tom wrote:
"Could you arrange to come up this week. You could get a train to Achray at Pembroke Sat. Night at 7.30 or more likely 10 o’clock and be here somewhere around 12 ..."
From the title and the Official Catalogue Raisonné entry, "The Lake, Bright Day, Fall 1916" might have been Grand Lake. The panel could have been done in the window of time around October 4th while Tom was still a fire ranger.
This painting could have also been Canoe Lake. In "Birches, 1916", Tom was postulated to have taken the train from Achray to spend some quality time "home" with his guiding friends. Train travel was reasonably fast and would have easily had Tom back to Canoe Lake in time to enjoy the beautiful autumn weather. Tom apparently returned to Toronto by November 16th, 1916.
The McElroys of Point Alexander come to the rescue again. They are extremely familiar with Thomson's works from 1916 and the Grand Lake area. (See "Tom Thomson at Achray in 1916")
Bob and Diana have paddled the Achray area since the 1970s but started working seriously on Thomson painting locations in 2013. They continue to contribute much to the Thomson legacy.
Like Jim and Sue Waddington who wrote "In the Footsteps of the Group of Seven, the McElroys "have a passion for paddling and investigating Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven painting places." These art investigators also have backgrounds in nuclear physics which I share. Jim Waddington and I even went to the Brockville Collegiate and Vocational School and married our high school sweethearts... but I digress.
The travels of Diana and Bob McElroy in the wake of Thomson's canoe provide some interesting background to "The Lake, Bright Day, Fall 1916".
As they note on their website:
"We suspect that several of Thomson's paintings are of Berm Lake and of the mouth of Johnson Creek on Grand Lake. However, these identifications are perhaps the most speculative of our determinations because modern vegetation has completely altered this landscape."
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| The Lake, Bright Day, Fall 1916, Oil on wood 8 7/16 x 10 1/2 in. (21.5 x 26.7 cm), Tom's Paintbox size, Catalogue 1916.109 |
"We suspect that this was painted from on or near the the railway embankment looking towards the mouth of Johnston Creek and beyond to Carcajou Bay."
Above image: "Here is that view from 1978. The sketch is a 'tighter crop' than the photo. This location, the mouth of Johnston Creek and the mouth of Carcajou Bay all line up — on the map, in the photo and in the sketch."Image to the left: "Here is that same view (or very close) from 2016 May — quite ingrown. And even more ingrown in the summer."
The geometry is detailed in the composite graphic below.
The efforts of the McElroys to locate the exact painting location were hampered by the regrowth of the forest during the intervening years. It was demonstrated in "View from the Top of a Hill 1916" that the forest around Grand Lake had been clear-cut in the early 20th century. Tom recorded those naked forest views on his small panels. The trees have come back in the last century masking those clear-cut landscapes.
My Thomson friend suggested that "The Lake, Bright Day, Fall 1916" might have been observed at Canoe Lake from the mouth of the "Rainbow" Creek where Tom had painted before looking upstream in "Autumn Clouds", Catalogue Raisonné 1915.75. The details of that painting location are included below.
Although the required view looking southeastward across Canoe Lake has the proper illumination, the terrain does not match.
Sometimes we have to proceed with the Creative Scene Investigation without a perfect identification for the location. The remaining option is to do nothing and that is not acceptable.
Thankfully, the science of the clouds has not changed! Close examination of the weather might reveal some truths behind Tom's "The Lake, Bright Day, Fall 1916". The clouds that Tom painted were multi-cell convective cumuli characteristic of early fall rather than later in the season. This fact favours a location around Grand Lake that is yet to be found. Note that the science of multi-cell cumulonimbus (thunderstorms) was described in "Thunder Cloud: Summer 1912" but these clouds were not severe thunderstorms - just "fairweather" cumuli.
In “Cloud Shapes and Lines in the Atmosphere” I illustrated that cloud patterns are much simpler if you immerse yourself within the atmospheric frame of reference. Our earthly frame of observation is not where the clouds live. Cloud puffs, swirls and lines are all part of the same deformation zone conceptual model. All lines in the sky must be deformation zones!
Most people see the lines first as the swirls are typically less obvious. An atmospheric line details the swirl location and type and whether the air is likely to be rising or subsiding. The line of the deformation zone must also be either parallel to the atmospheric frame winds when the wind speed increases or perpendicular to the wind if the wind speed is decreasing (see "A Jet Streak with a Paddle" and "Lines and Swirls Explained" for further explanations). Simply, the deformation zone can reveal the weather. It was my favourite meteorological tool ... but I digress yet again.
Moisture in the air traces air flows which would otherwise remain unseen. These patterns directly relate to the physical processes and the weather. Smoke rings are a common example of the physics of the deformation zone at work.
The puff of air that forms a smoke ring can be blown in any direction. The updraft heated from the ground that forms a single-cell cumulus cloud must be initially pointed upward.
The cloud envelopes are deformation zone skins. As described in "Finding Deformation Zones" and in many other posts within The Art and Science of Phil the Forecaster, the shape of the deformation zones uniquely describes an array of nested three-dimensional swirls and the associated atmospheric frame of reference winds. Before your eyes glaze over, the details of this are not repeated here and this material will not be on any exam... Only the highlights required to explain what Tom saw on that bright fall day will be included.
I painted a single-cell cumulus on the left. The first cell to go up convectively must be the typical bowed-shaped "cauliflower" cloud. Subsequent updrafts will be double-cyclonic deformation zone shapes linked together in a chain with the positive vorticity maxima dominating the vorticity minima.
In Tom's painting, there are three individual updrafts or smoke ring "puffs" within the prominent cumulus cloud. The 3D patterns can only be described by 2D lines within the flat graphics of this post. There are strong and bold vertical strokes in the painting linked to bumps in the cauliflower cloud head.
The horizontal wind typically increases with height and the first initial updraft was tipped over with that wind. The third and final updraft was more vertical. The take-home message from this multi-cell cumulus cloud was that the wind was blowing left to right and increased with height. The impact of friction is responsible for slower wind speeds near the ground.
The following animation of multicell thunderstorms illustrates the same process occurring in the less dramatic cumulus clouds.
Cloud streets of cumuli parallel the horizontal wind direction. Helical circulations develop within the planetary boundary level as imagined by Irving Langmuir. (See "Langmuir Streaks – Take the time to Observe and Learn from Nature" for more details.)
Another way to create a local decrease in pressure is to have air ascending with a convective thermal. Surface pressure must decrease under ascending air! (That is how your home barometer can help explain the weather but I digress.)The resulting cloud patterns form a continuum of shapes that evolve from simple cumulus to more complex multicellular convective clouds. If the horizontal wind is strong enough Langmuir streaks of parallel cloud streets also develop. That is what Tom witnessed on that bright autumn day in 1916.
The following graphic summarizes what the clouds can reveal about Thomson's "The Lake, Bright Day, Fall 1916".
- The multi-cell cumulus cloud in Tom's painting conclusively indicates that the wind was from left to right. The updrafts move higher with time and in that interval, the horizontal wind was advecting the successive thermals from the left to the right. The wind was increasing with height and tipping those thermals over as well.
- The bright top of another cumulus behind the first reveals that another such line of cumulus clouds was developing to the south. This is where "Chili" science comes into play.
- The solar illumination on the clouds indicated a southerly view across a large expanse of a lake.
- The sun was on the back, right shoulder of Tom who was looking away from the bright sunlight and recording the colourful, front-lit scene. Artists rarely stare into the sun...
- From the clouds on the southern horizon, we can deduce that the cumulus clouds were within the cold conveyor belt of an approaching storm.
The skies were blue overhead but thicker and overcast clouds were on the southern horizon. The cirrus deformation zone might have already moved to the north of Tom's painting location but that cirrus was not thick enough to significantly obstruct the daytime heating required to fuel those convective, cumulus bubbles on that bright, autumn day. Quite often when viewing satellite imagery, I witness the cumulus aligning with the cold conveyor belt only in the areas ahead of the cirrus level deformation zone. The moisture content and instability within the cold air mass determine the extent of such cumulus but that is another story.
I consulted with my friend Johnny Met and he made these observations:
"I think the artist paused in the early evening to enjoy the sunset. It is fall. The leaves have turned red and gold and are blowing to the ground because of the wind. The sky looks windy, with the daytime cumulus starting to break up into skud clouds. There is a higher layer of cloud looking like altocumulus, either moving towards the artist or disappearing over the horizon.The artist has his back to the sunset, so he is looking east, meaning altocumulus is moving eastwards. The lake seems a little rough, maybe a Beauford scale of 1 or 2."
Johnny Met's weather observations are more or less consistent with the above diagnosis. A direction of view somewhere between the east and south is required based on the weather. It is always good to have a second or even third expert opinion.
The meteorology of clouds and winds has not changed in the last century although our understanding of the processes might have improved since Tom's days. Although there are potential alternatives to explaining what Tom observed, the above summary ticks all of the boxes as a likely scenario. I find it intriguing that we can place Thomson more accurately within the weather pattern of the day than we can in the changing forested landscape.
The following cumulus cloud patterns were very similar while I prepared this post. I was watching a springtime northeasterly cold conveyor belt being drawn into an approaching weather system at 2:30 pm on the afternoon of Sunday, May 19th, 2024. I was looking southeasterly from the front porch enjoying the sights and sounds of spring. Each "puff" in the following image can be envisioned as a separate smoke-ring circulation. The single cumulus tends to merge the independent smoke rings into one cloud mass. The weather situation would have been almost identical for Thomson on the autumn afternoon in 1916.
It might also be instructive to examine how Tom constructed the composition of "The Lake, Bright Day". There are no art police and Tom could do whatever pleased him. This also allows another look at what moved Tom - nature and the weather...
This painting was in the stack of panels salvaged from Thomson's Shack. Probably Harris or MacDonald suggested the title "The Lake, Bright Day". They also applied the estate stamp on both the front and the back of the panel. If Dr MacCallum had taken the train to Achray as Tom had asked, the good doctor might have been with Tom when this was painted. That could also explain why it ended up in Dr MacCallum's personal collection of Thomson's art.
Inscription recto:
- l.l., estate stamp (see above graphic)
Inscription verso:
- c., and l.l., estate stamp;
- in graphite, 1916- fall JM / Creek running into–;
- u.c., in black crayon, James MacCallum;
- u.r., label, AGT Dec. 31/40 National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (4650)
Provenance:
- Dr. J.M. MacCallum, Toronto
- National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (4650). Bequest of Dr. J.M. MacCallum, Toronto, 1944
This panel must have caught MacCallum's eye during the sorting process of the spring of 1918. It is still unknown whether Tom's patron had made the train trip to Achray in October 1916 as requested in the October 4th letter written by Tom.
Boots on the ground and paddles in the water not to mention open minds and good science are required to really appreciate Thomson's art. History can be rediscovered and brought to life if we only try.
Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,
Phil Chadwick Tom Thomson Post TT-129
PS: Tom Thomson Was A Weatherman - Summary As of Now contains all of the entries to date.
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