Larsen Wayne - Tom Thomson: artist of the North

Wayne Larsen

Wayne Larsen is a landscape painter, newspaper editor, and columnist whose work has appeared in a wide variety of print and online publications. He grew up in Montreals east end and in Val David, Quebec, where he spent a lot of time fishing and climbing mountains.

He is currently a full-time professor in the Journalism Department at Concordia University. His freelance career has included work as a news and feature writer for the Montreal Gazette , as well as a copy editor at Readers Digest Canada . From 2000 to 2010 he was editor-in-chief of the Westmount Examiner , during which period the paper won several awards for excellence.

As an artist, he has painted the landscapes of several different regions of Canada. He has always been especially interested in Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, and, as a result, he is often invited to lecture on twentieth-century Canadian art and media issues.

Tom Thomson: Artist of the North is Waynes fourth book. He has previously written biographies of A.Y. Jackson and James Wilson Morrice. His full-length biography A.Y. Jackson: The Life of a Landscape Painter reached the number-two position on the Globe and Mail bestseller list (art books).

He currently lives in Montreal with his wife, art historian Darlene Cousins, and their children, Nikolas and Bryn-Vienna.

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A QUEST BIOGRAPHY

TOM THOMSON

ARTIST OF THE NORTH

WAYNE LARSEN

Copyright Wayne Larsen, 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Project Editor: Michael Carroll

Editor: Jennifer McKnight

Design: Jennifer Scott

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Larsen, Wayne, 1961-

Tom Thomson : artist of the North / by Wayne Larsen.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued also in an electronic format.

ISBN 978-1-55488-772-9

1. Thomson, Tom, 1877-1917. 2. Group of Seven (Group of artists). 3. Painters--Canada--Biography. 4. Landscape painting, Canadian--20th century. I. Title.

ND249.T5L372 2010 759.11 C2010-902700-0

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books , and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation .

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

www.dundurn.com

Dundurn Press

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Dundurn Press

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To Darlene, as always

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 An Excavation at Canoe Lake

2 From Forests to Fields

3 A Young Man About Town

4 Shooting the Rapids

5 Storm Clouds on the Horizon

6 Bursts of Light and Colour

7 In the Northland

8 The Pageant of the North

9 An Overturned Canoe

10 Establishing the Icon

Chronology of Tom Thomson (18771917)

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

A biography of this nature is built largely upon facts unearthed by others, and to that end I would like to acknowledge my debt to the research and scholarship of Charles C. Hill, Joan Murray, Dennis Reid, and David Silcox, whose previous works on Tom Thomson and his contemporaries have helped to put his life into perspective.

I would also like to acknowledge Peter Downie for his constant interest in this project and his many helpful suggestions. Thank you, Komrade!

At Dundurn, many thanks to Jennifer McKnight for her diligent work on the manuscript not to mention photography service above and beyond the call and to Michael Carroll for his guidance and enthusiasm for this project from the very beginning. My thanks also go to Kirk Howard, Karen McMullin, and Marta Warner for their hard work and support.

Thanks to Karen Forbes Cutler for her photo of the Studio Building; to Bill Thornley for providing the idyllic winter writing space; and for their help in a variety of ways, thank you to Alan Aitken, Doreen Lindsay, Terry Rigelhof, and Marilynn Vanderstaay. Id also like to thank Ron Tozer from The Friends of Algonquin Park for providing photos from the Algonquin Park Archives.

Thanks also to my children, Nik and Bryn, who always seem to be called upon to perform some task during the writing and research process and always come through.