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| Thomson's Shack in 1915 |
Tom Thomson headed back to Algonquin in mid-March 1916 after a very productive winter roughing it in "
The Shack" for a dollar a month. That winter produced masterworks "
Spring Ice", "
In the Northland", "
Autumn's Garland" and "
The Pool" to mention just a few.
En route, Tom visited with Winnie Trainor for a few days at her #3 Minerva Street home in Huntsville. My friend Roy MacGregor relates that when Winnie used to rent out the lower floor of her big brown house, she told renters they were lucky to be living in the only house in Canada where Tom Thomson had painted the living room walls.
Mid-March of 1916 was perhaps when Tom spruced up Winnie's living room with a fresh coat of paint. Like so many things, we will never know. No doubt he did not sign those walls just like he typically didn't autograph his plein air work either. "Spring Break-up, 1916" was one of the few exceptions when he did add his signature.
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| Canoe Lake Station |
After leaving Huntsville and Winne Trainor, Tom took the Grand Trunk Railway to Canoe Lake Station. There was a brief window of time for Tom to be painting ice in the spring of 1916. Only one creek aside from Potter and Joe was within safe and easy reach of Mowat Lodge. That unnamed creek drains Rainbow Lake which is a few kilometres to the north. Travel during that time of year can be treacherous given the questionable ice and water conditions. Even walking through the clear-cut forest would have been a challenge given the tangle of brush and a slushy mix of marsh, ice and snow. Everything would be slippery with spring.
It is important to remember the landscape that Thomson returned to in the spring of 1916 was still in the grips of an icy winter. It was also a ravaged land, the details of which can be found in a previous post "
Tom Thomson's Spring, Algonquin Park, Spring 1916".
Here is a brief summary of how and why the landscapes around Canoe Lake changed so dramatically.
Recall that the Gilmour brothers operated the huge Gilmour Mill in Trenton. 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 Gilmours were running out of timber so at the Ontario government auction in October 1892, David Gilmour purchased the timber rights on 225 square kilometres of land in the Canoe and Joe Lake region. The consensus was that he paid far too much.
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| Gilmour and Co. Sawmills at Canoe Lake1903 |
David Gilmour and his brother Allan built the new company town at Canoe Lake in 1896. The bustling village 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. 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.
The new lumber mill was charging full steam ahead in the spring of 1897 but the 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 for good. Everyone returned to Trenton but even that mill and the Gilmour Lumber Company were done and torn down by 1909.
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| Spring, Algonquin Park, Spring 1916 |
Tom also painted "S
pring, Algonquin Park" in 1916 and the ravaged landscape was well recorded in that painting. The chip yard location where Tom painted that scene was very near where "
Spring Break-up" had been completed a couple of weeks earlier.
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| Location and viewing angles for Spring, Algonquin Park, Spring 1916 |
As revealed by Thomson's painting and photograph, the Mowat chip yard was desolate and the surrounding forest had been denuded of valuable timber to feed the Canoe Lake and Trenton lumber mills. "Spring, Algonquin Park" would have been painted in mid-April just before Thomson left on his fishing trip to the Cauchon Lakes.
In late March 1916 when Thomson painted "Spring Break-up", that same painting spot would have been accessible by the road from Mowat Lodge to Canoe Lake Station. The road access was not too bad in comparison to getting to all of the other painting places that he might have wished to get to.
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Spring River/Spring Break-up, 1916
Oil on composite wood-pulp board 8 1/2 x 10 1/2 in 21.6 x 26.7 cm
Tom's Paint Box Size |
The lakes and creeks would have still been full of ice in late March exactly as Thomson observed. The painting location for "Spring Break-up, 1916" would have been close to his accommodation at Mowat Lodge. A likely creek would have been a short stroll along the road to Canoe Lake Station just north of the Lodge. Thomson possibly painted "Autumn Clouds Fall 1915" at the same location the previous fall. The following graphic summarizes that painting's location looking northwest along "Rainbow Creek". The creek drains Rainbow Lake so it is appropriate to name it after its source although officially, it has no known name.
The creek painted in "Spring Break-up, 1916" gets narrow with distance and deviates to the gap in the hills to the left in the above graphic. This suggests that the view was looking upstream and Tom was close to the mouth of the creek where it drained into Canoe Lake. If this is the case, Tom was looking more northerly than when he painted "Autumn Clouds Fall 1915" which is an important factor in deciphering the weather.
The central hill in "Autumn Clouds Fall 1915" is labelled as Hill 2 above and also in the following graphic. The terrain recorded in "Spring Break-up, 1916" matches the hills around the north end of Canoe Lake.
Tom completed several paintings from the area around the mouth of "Rainbow" Creek using Mowat Lodge as his home base. These paintings all had northerly viewing angles. Plein air artists avoid looking into the sun for more reasons than to protect their eyesight. Any scene illuminated with the sun on the artist's back must be front-lit and full of colour. There are of course exceptions to every generalization but at the latitude of Algonquin Park, it is typically correct to start a Creative Scene Investigation with a northerly viewing angle.
The investigation of the terrain using elevation maps and other Thomson art to locate the painting spot for "Spring Break-up, 1916" was challenging. One can never be certain particularly since the forest has recovered and changed so much in the last century. Thankfully Tom painted exactly what he saw. The clues included in his oils reveal much about the nature of the landscape.
Thomson's painting revealed that the flow in "Rainbow Creek" was subsiding and the spring flood was well past. The ice was melting first along the shoreline as the bare earth soaked in the heat from the sun. The white ice supported from the bottom of the creek was drained of water after the flood had passed. The remaining water in the creek's main channel was calm and reflective. Tom's painting observed that spring was right around the corner... of the creek!
The ice along the edge provides the clincher that the spring flood has passed. The ice breaks first along the edge like a hinge. As the water continues to recede, these lines paralleling the shape of the shore form further out from the edge. Structure on the bottom of the creek can also cause other more random cracks in the rotten ice. The following graphic locates these fractures in the rotten ice.
The same ice transformation noted on the banks of "
Rainbow" Creek can also be observed on the shores of a lake. The movement of lake ice can push some of it up on the shoreline - above the water level. Water drains from the crystalline structure dramatically "
whitening" the reflective surface. The high water content of "
rotten", melting ice keeps the mass as a cohesive, sodden conglomerate of crystals. Those crystals become separate reflectors when the water drains away. I only have a distant view of the remains of "
whitened" ice on the north shore of Singleton Lake. I have witnessed tall piles of brilliant ice on those rocky shores but omitted taking pictures to chronicle the event. I wish I had anticipated the need to document that science, unaware at the time that Tom had recorded the phenomenon in oils. That ice is the last to melt and patches of it can be seen in the accompanying photo.
And now for the weather... Admittedly, the sky was just a tiny portion of this landscape not even filling the top third of the small panel. Regardless of the minimal space allocated, Thomson still devoted his full attention to the nuances of the clouds.
Tom had the sun on his back and the northerly viewing angle of the scene would favour a timing around noon. There were no shadows painted into this scene as they would all be pointed away from Tom and thus not visible.
I also consulted with my friend Johnny Met and he made these observations:
"The sky is relatively easy for a weather observer to see. There are several layers of clouds. In spring, there is a lot of surface moisture from melting snow and ice. The lower cloud looks like the first daytime heating cumulus forming. Then a brisk upper wind may be a warm conveyor belt blowing perpendicular to the cloud, making ripples in the higher cloud. The altocumulus seems to be invading the sky from the west. There is a layer of wispy, see-through cirrus cloud above all the other clouds that may be associated with a jet stream."
Thomson did an underpainting on the panel for “Spring Break-up, 1916”. The high-resolution image of the painting on the Alan Klinkhoff Gallery site clearly shows the texture of the brushstrokes that applied the coloured underpainting. Preparing a surface for a painting is actually quite involved and it is unclear whether Thomson did all of the steps which are described briefly in order below.
- Blocking Size - Raw canvas, or any oil painting substrate, requires an impermeable barrier between itself and the oil paint. One does not want the oils seeping into the substrate. As well any chemicals in the substrate must not leach into the oils.
- Priming - The painting surface also requires priming. The primer is also called a ground or gesso. The primer is not size and will not seal or create a barrier to the surface or paint. The absorbent primer does exactly the opposite by providing a surface for the paint to bind to. A ground of oil paint has more tooth and provides more drag on the brush as compared to the slippery acrylic or traditional rabbit skin gessoes.
- Underpainting follows the priming step when you want to start to create your composition. Earth colours are typically used for underpainting in oils because they dry quickly due to their iron content; have a matte finish and have large particle sizes. The texture of the underpainting can often be seen in the final work. This underpainting stage needs to be loose and creative, at least for me. I do not use rulers or straight edges.
My Thomson friend brought the following details of the underpainting of “Spring Break-up, 1916” to my attention. It is well worth sharing as it provides more insight into the art of Tom Thomson. Note how the brushstrokes that applied the yellow ochre oils are aligned along a diagonal from corner to corner. The thick, oily strokes provide interesting, additional texture to the finished painting as well as a complementary colour to the composition.
The complementary colours of yellow ochre are light blues or greens on the opposite side of the colour wheel - exactly as Tom included in "Spring Break-up". Letting some of the underpainting peek through the finished art allows the adjacent, complementary colours to scintillate. Employing some simple colour theory can make the art sparkle and come alive!
A coloured underpainting also benefits the eye health of a plein air artist. Painting on a bright and reflective white gessoed surface with the sun on your back is very hard on your eyes. All wavelengths including ultra-violet are reflected from a white painting surface into the artist's eyes. A coloured surface is much less reflective.
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| Spring River/Spring Break-up, 1916 |
This painting was not in the tall stack of panels moved from Thomson's Shack to the Studio Building in the spring of 1918. Lawren Harris and J.E.H MacDonald had assumed the gargantuan task of trying to organize Thomson's work of the past five years. The Thomson Estate Stamp was not used on this panel. Tom signed the panel in the lower right with very dark oils using a small brush.
Mario Airomi, the master artist from Florence who relocated to Maitland near Brockville after World War Two, advised me to never use black paint in dark shadows. Instead, "Pheal, use a dark complement and mixing red with it will yield a surprise". I smile every time at the wisdom of Mario! Thomson apparently used both bone and charcoal black oil pigments and it looks like he employed one of those to sign his name on this panel.
Telling the story of a painting is important but the art must also speak for itself. While in galleries I often watch people look at the signature before the painting. The signature is important but much less than listening to the brush strokes. The name need not be large and blaring but it does need to be there, somewhere.
There are no rules. Some artists only sign the back of a painting. I sign both the recto and verso. The name on the front (recto) must blend with the painting. The loudest voice needs to be that of the oils rather than the signature. Typically that signature is signed when the painting is done but the oils are still wet. This is just my opinion of course.
Tom’s choice of black paint for his signature (above right) makes me ponder that signing this work was an afterthought not using the wet oils on his palette. Tom's signature on "Birches, 1916" used a colour mixed from his palette (above left). The likely time "Spring Break-up, 1916" was signed was when Tom gifted the art to a friend. Of course, we will never know for certain.
Inscription recto:
- signed by the artist, 'TOM THOMSON' (lower right)
Inscription verso:
- inscribed, ‘CAT.90’ (verso frame, upper left, in crayon);
- titled & inscribed, ‘Spring Ice / TOM THOMSON / Mrs. J.S. McLean’ (verso frame, upper right, in graphite)
Provenance:
- The J.S. McLean Collection of Canadian Painting
- Edith Lillian Flavelle McLean, probably circa 1954, bequest from the above, her late husband
- William F. McLean, probably circa 1967, by descent from the above, his mother
- Carol June McLean, circa 2001, bequest from the above, her husband
- Private collection, Ontario.
The fact that Tom signed this sketch indicates that it probably went to an unknown friend. Tom only signed a very few plein air sketches and these all went to friends like Ernest Freure, Daphne Crombie, and Tom McLean. The "J.S. McLean" noted in the provenance above was the president of Canada Packers and not related to Thomson's friend Tom McLean.
J.S. McLean started to collect Canadian art in the late 1920s. McLean’s impressive collection was shown at the National Gallery of Canada in February and March 1952 and it included eight oil panels by Tom Thomson. Thomson had signed five of those paintings. There are no records detailing how and when McLean acquired these paintings which might have revealed the identity of the unknown Thomson friend. Later in 1952, McLean recalled:
“Tom Thomson had been dead more than ten years and, although I have several of his oil sketches, including that of the “West Wind”, I have never been able to secure a good Thomson canvas.”
J.S. McLean (1876-1954) was one of the country's most avid collectors of Canadian contemporary art. The art is now in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). The
J.S. McLean Collection of Canadian Painting was gifted to the Ontario Heritage Foundation in 1969. It was then donated to the AGO in 1988. Canada Packers further gifted 173 paintings from the McLean Collection in 1990.
As mentioned above, Thomas Wesley McLean [1881-1951] who worked with Tom Thomson at the Grip was not related to J.S. McLean - the last name is just a coincidence. The story behind Tom McLean was detailed in "Tom Thomson's, Aura Lee Lake, Spring 1916". Tom McLean was a vital thread linking the personalities who guided Thomson to Algonquin and his meteoric 5-year burst of creativity. Encounters can be serendipitous and Tom McLean's involvement would lead to the "Algonquin School of Art" in 1914 and then to the Group of Seven in 1920. History can be created from the simplest of circumstances.
In the spring of 1916 Thomson was having fun with his paints. He did not need to venture far from his room at Mowat Lodge to be inspired. Of course, no one can be certain that the above story is absolutely accurate but it does make the most of the clues left in plain sight on Tom's small panel.
Maybe surprisingly, the underlying theme is one of a devasted environment and economic ruin. With the Canoe Lake forest clear-cut, there was nothing to hold back the meltwater from the winter storms over the Algonquin Highlands. The spring floods along "Rainbow" Creek would have been a recent occurrence but one that Thomson recorded on this small panel. These lessons have yet to be learned not just in Canada but around the globe.
Thank you for taking the time to read this...
Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,
Phil Chadwick, Tom Thomson Post TT-130
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