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Biography & Autobiography Artists, Architects, Photographers

Tom Thomson

Artist of the North

by (author) Wayne Larsen

Publisher
Dundurn Press
Initial publish date
Jan 2011
Category
Artists, Architects, Photographers, Environmentalists & Naturalists, Historical
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781554888498
    Publish Date
    Jan 2011
    List Price
    $7.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781554887729
    Publish Date
    Jan 2011
    List Price
    $19.99

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Description

Tom Thomson (1877-1917) occupies a prominent position in Canada’s national culture and has become a celebrated icon for his magnificent landscapes as well as for his brief life and mysterious death. The shy, enigmatic artist and woodsman’s innovative painting style produced such seminal Canadian images as The Jack Pine and The West Wind, while his untimely drowning nearly a century ago is still a popular subject of fierce debate.

Originally a commercial artist, Thomson fell in love with the forests and lakes of Ontario’s Algonquin Park and devoted himself to rendering the north country’s changing seasons in a series of colourful sketches and canvases. Dividing his time between his beloved wilderness and a shack behind the Studio Building near downtown Toronto, Thomson was a major inspiration to his painter friends who, not long after his death, went on to change the course of Canadian art as the influential - and equally controversial - Group of Seven.

About the author

Wayne Larsen is a Montreal artist, editor, and writer whose work has appeared in a wide variety of publications. Currently, he teaches graduate-level journalism at Concordia University and is the author of A.Y. Jackson: The Life of a Landscape Painter and James Wilson Morrice: Painter of Light and Shadow. He lives in Verdun, Quebec.

Wayne Larsen's profile page