Tom Thomson and A Gibson Girl

TOM THOMSON AND A COLLECTION WORTH BUILDING

YOU DON'T HAVE TO OWN AN ORIGINAL SKETCH TO CELEBRATE HIS ART

IT FOUND MY EYE. OR MAYBE MY EYE FOUND IT. THERE IT WAS, WITHIN ARM'S REACH. A BOOK I SUSPECTED WOULD SOMEHOW CONTAIN INFORMATION ON CANADIAN LANDSCAPE ARTIST, TOM THOMSON. MY WIFE SUZANNE, AND I, HAD BEEN ROAMING AROUND THE LOCAL SECOND HAND SHOP FOR ABOUT A HALF HOUR, AND I WAS JUST WRAPPING UP MY BROWSING, WHEN AS A GIFT FOR THE PATIENT AMONGST US, I SAW THE DATE ON THE BOOK'S SPINE. THE YEAR WAS 1913. THE TITLE OF THE VINTAGE BOOK WAS "THE YEAR BOOK OF CANADIAN ART 1913." I JUMPED ON THAT BOOK LIKE IT WAS A LOOSE FOOTBALL ON THE ONE YARD LINE. THERE IT WAS. JUST LIKE THAT! ONE CRITICALLY IMPORTANT LINE IN THE BOOK, WAS WORTH FIFTY DOLLARS TO ME….JUST TO SAY I OWNED IT! AND KEEP IN MIND THAT I'M OBSESSIVELY FRUGAL WHEN IT COMES TO BUYING BOOKS. WHICH OF COURSE, WILL ULTIMATELY SIT ON MY OFFICE SHELF COLLECTING DUST. ANY BOOK I PURCHASE NOW HAS GOT TO FIT INTO THE BIG PICTURE. IT'S GOT TO BE A DIMENSIONAL INVESTMENT. A WRITING RESOURCE, AND ONE THAT HAS A SUBSTANTIAL VALUE ATTACHED. SO HERE'S THE ONE LINE, IN ONE BOOK, CANADIAN ART RESEARCHERS WOULD WANT IN THEIR ARCHIVES. BUT I GOT TO IT FIRST.

"Tom Thomson's 'Northern Lake,' is remarkable for its fidelity to the northern shore; boulders and undergrowth in the foreground, the brown water turned to the deep blue of the sky under the fresh gale that is putting white caps on the little lake."

From the book, reviewed in yesterday's blog, by artist Albert Robinson, (on Tom Thomson) you will remember the passage he wrote about "Northern Lake." After returning to Toronto from a lengthy stay in Ontario's Algonquin Park, Thomson arrived back in Toronto with a packet of newly completed sketches, which he let Robinson and his other painter friends look at, to see if there was anything salvageable. Just a few, including one sketch they found exceptionally well composed. "We urged him to paint one of his sketches upon a large canvas, and gave him the keys and use of the studio on weekends. So a 'Northern Lake,' came into being in 1913, his first attempt on a large canvas. It attracted the admiration of his fellow artists, and to his astonishment was purchased by the Government of Ontario."

It was only one line, but it was the first serious published review, of one of Canada's soon-to-be legendary landscape artists…..the man who led the way to the creation of the Group of Seven Artists. Unfortunately, he died before his own inclusion in the movement he help inspire.

The book also contains a large amount of Canadian art history from this period, including a chapter on Quebec painter, sculptor A. Suzor-Cote, by C. Lintern Sibley, another on The National Gallery of Canada, by Eric Browne, who became one of its critically innovative directors. It was Browne who was most influential opening up the gallery to works by Thomson and the Group of Seven. I also own a copy of the book Browne's wife wrote, following her husband's death, and it contains important information about Tom Thomson. The 1913 Year Book also contains chapters on the Montreal Art Club, The Ontario College of Art, The Toronto Museum of Art, The Ontario Society of Artists, The Toronto Exhibition of Little Pictures, written by well known artist C.W. Jefferys, who was then President of the Ontario Society of Artists; a chapter on The Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Royal Academy of Art, the Canadian Art Club, written by future Group of Seven member, Lawren Harris. Other relevant chapters to the study of Canadian art, includes French Canadian Painting and Sculpture, Montreal Art Association, Spring Exhibition, a chapter on Graphic Art by another future Group of Seven Artist, Arthur Lismer, and one entitled "Canadian Art: A Resume," by E. Wyly Greer, a past president of the Ontario Society of Artists.

So what was going on in Canadian art in the year 1913, other than Tom Thomson's joy at selling his first major painting? Here's a little of what E. Wyly Greer thought was important to note:

"The position of the painter in Canada, in relation to his contemporaries is very much the same as that occupied by the artist in England. In a land where the inhabitants pride themselves on their industrial achievements, the possession of the subtler senses is not wholly joyous, and the possessor is often looked upon with suspicion. As the fatigue produced by the tremendous and constant pressure of water is to the swimmer, so is the deadly, suffocating effect of the weight surrounding utilities on the artist, in a country of commerce. In England the dreamer of the family goes into the church, or accepts a mild tutorship. Sometimes he paints or writes poetry. Then his troubles begin. Either of these occupations is highly revolutionary in a British community. The artist is conscious of himself. He is probably defiant in his utterances in verse or in paint. If he is any good he can't paint acceptable Academy pictures, and can't write popular or salable verse. Only one here and there, whose talent is the superstructure of a very strong character, who is the more determined as he is the more rebuffed, ultimately succeeds.

"On this continent the artist is even more singular than in Britain. We have no leisured class; no idle sons to potter with dilettante pursuits, and who, almost unconsciously, drift into art. In Canada, the artistic youngster, realizing that he must make a living, apprentices himself to a firm of lithographers or designers, learns his 'high' art in the evenings at an art class or school, and gradually emerges into the glare of the public exhibitions and achieves fame. This fame is local in it early stages and is more easily attained than in England, where the competitors are more numerous, and where distinct recognition at the great exhibitions of Europe, is the criterion of merit. In Canada, too, those picture collectors who are not guided by the dealers are quick to recognize budding genius."

One of the most profound statements, made by Greer, reads as follows: "We who paint know something of the under-workings of this thing - the bubbling and churning which scarcely yet ripple the surface. The connoisseur is faintly cognizant; only the dealer is unaware. I am reluctant to introduce into the peaceful circle of the sister arts that perennial bone of contention, the subject of national art. But I believe that our art will never hold a commanding position, to use a soldier's phrase, until we are stirred by big emotions born of our landscape; braced to big, courageous efforts by our climate; and held to patient persistent endeavor by that great pioneer spirit which animated the explorers and soldiers of early Canada. The thing needs courage. All original art depends for its adequate utterance and ultimate victory upon the possession of this quality. The painter, beleaguered by the hosts of Philistia, is solitary, and must be a giant - first, to hold his fortress, and then to conquer the surrounding territory. There is something of the romantic interest of knight-errantry in our undertaking."

This was a highly visionary statement made by E. Wyly Greer. Prophetic in fact. Here was Thomson's bold and beautiful "Northern Lake," stirring the critics pen, and heralding a period that would see the creation of one of Canada's most profound shifts in art. And it was to be a rough road ahead. But here it is……a challenge to artists and the art community to be courageous….to take chances, and to "conquer the surrounding territory." It is even more profound, when you consider how the new work launched by the Group of Seven, left many art critics speechless…..and those who could speak, leveled considerable criticism. Much wound up in print, including rebukes form the likes of Hector Charlesworth, who had running editorial battles with Group members like A.Y. Jackson, as to what was acceptable and accomplished art. Charlesworth didn't appreciate the Group's apparent interest, in setting the new standard of contemporary art in Canada.

So here was this early call to arms, for Canadian artists, to challenge status quo. I made a good find. My newly acquired book was given a place of honor in my Thomson archives.

When I'm working on research projects, and collecting at the same time, to build a small library of pertinent books, I look for texts like this Canadian Art Year Book, because it inevitably contains important tidbits of information hard to find anywhere else. Some of it is contained in other related overviews, and summary histories, but I like the raw resource that actually puts me safely in the year I'm studying. There will be collateral information to draw on, to paint an accurate picture of what was going on in Canada, as far as the art community, in that specific year. I would like more of these. Here's why, in a nutshell. When someone produces a book on Thomson, for example, they choose to include research material, that supports their thesis, their editorial perspective, and they also make selections about information to be excluded. I hate that! I want the information they're deciding is irrelevant, because most of the time, what they're editing out, is information I find critical to the story. It happens all the time. Publishers want tight, to the point, cost efficient text by budget conscious authors. I'm nothing of the sort. What they cut out of a story, I would like to scoop up for my own archives. They don't offer it to me, and I suppose it just gets shelved in the Thomson file, and nothing more comes of it….unless there is a second revised printing. Chances are, the stuff I want will get cut again. The only way to beat this trend, is to own the reference material myself, so my dependance on subject authors, to present it in their books, becomes less of an issue. I've got lots of material on Thomson that I've never seen published anywhere else. I'm also guarded about it, as I'm sure you understand. I'm saving up for the hundred year anniversary of his death, in July 2017, when I hope to run my next feature series on Thomson's life and death, in one of the regional publications I'm currently connected.

I never know when this material is likely to surface. At a garage sale? In a job-lot of books at an estate auction? Thrift shop, second hand store, antique mall, or antique shop? But I never stop looking. I'm rewarded for my patience. If anything I can pass along, as a career collector, and historian, check every book, every box, every mysterious nook and cranny, and never say never. My finds are profitable.

One day, I would love to present to you, via this blog, a pic of an original Tom Thomson sketch, that I've found somewhere out on the local antique hunt. But you know what, in the meantime, I'll show you what may be an original Thomson sketch, on the back of a banjo skin, from a tenor banjo we purchased at an antique mall five years ago. See graphic above. Thomson once owned and played a tenor banjo but its whereabouts are unknown. This reference to the tenor banjo, and the fact it was missing, was included in the book, "Tom Thomson: Silence and the Storm," by David Silcox and Harold Town. Experts who have looked at the pen drawing of the "Gibson Girl," a well known graphic from earlier in the century, say it is in the artist's style…..but because it isn't signed…..well, you know the rest. The banjo belongs to my son Andrew. Was it once played by a legendary painter? We'll never know. But it's fun to speculate.

As far as collecting Thomson, or Group of Seven keepsakes, from books, commemorative stamps to prints, you will likely never run out of neat pieces to add to your walls, cabinets, display cases, or book shelves. Take a trip down to the McMichael Collection, in Kleinburg one day, and enjoy an amazing gallery tour of Canadian art, and a wonderfully stocked shop. You can also take a gander at the famous "Shack" Tom Thomson used to paint in, while working in Toronto, before he was given an opportunity to paint from the large Studio Building owned, I believe, by Lawren Harris

Thanks so much for joining today's blog. Please visit me again.