Thomas John Thomson (August 5, 1877 – July 8, 1917) was an influential Canadian artist of the early 20th century. He was closely associated with the painters who later became the Group of Seven, but died under mysterious circumstances before it formed
Tom Thomson was born near Claremont , Ontario and grew up in Leith, near Owen Sound. Some biographers report that in 1899 he tried unsuccessfully to volunteer to fight in the Second Boer War, and instead went to a business college in Chatham and later in Seattle, Washington. In 1904 he returned to Canada, and in 1907 joined an artistic design firm in Toronto where many of the future members of the Group of Seven also worked. With his colleagues he often travelled around Canada, especially to the wilderness of Ontario, which was a major source of inspiration for Thomson. His first exhibition was in 1913.
Beginning in 1914 he acted as a fire fighter and guide in Algonquin Park in Ontario. During the next three years he produced many of his most famous works, including The Jack Pine and The West Wind.
Thomson disappeared during a canoeing trip on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park in on July 8, 1917, and his body was discovered in the lake eight days later. The official cause of death was accidental drowning but there are still questions about how he actually died. It has been speculated that he was murdered by a German-American neighbor, Martin Blecher, Jr., or that he fell on a fire grate during a drunken brawl with J. Shannon Fraser, owner of Canoe Lake’s Mowat Lodge, over an old loan to Fraser for the purchase of canoes. Thomson alleged needed the money for a new suit to marry Winnifred Trainor, whose parents had a cottage at Canoe Lake. Rumors circulated following his drowning that she was pregnant with Thomson’s child. Winnifred Trainor made a trip to Philadephia with her mother the following winter and returned around Easter. She never spoke about her relationship with Thomson. A nephew, Terrance Trainor MacGregor, an upper New York resident who inherited her estate, which included at least 13 small Thomson paintings and letters, said the letters confirm their engagement. MacGregor has refused to produce the letters for scholarly investigation. Others believe that Thomson, who produced at least 63 landscape paintings that last spring, many of which he gave away or discarded, suffered severe depression and drowned himself. He was buried at Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park on July 17, 1917. Under the direction of his older brother, George Thomson, the body was exhumed two days later and re-interred in the family plot beside the Leith Presbyterian Church on July 21.
None of these theories are conclusive, and the wide range of speculation serves mostly to perpetuate Thomson’s romantic legend. [1]
Courtesy of Wikipedia.com
