Day: April 10, 2013

April 10, 1917 Thaw Snow Banks

It’s getting warmer as each day passes. The changes are becoming more pronounced. There’s still a lot of snow around but I’m starting to see some green. The first real green I saw was the willow shoots. Maybe they were green all winter, but the warmth of the sun is putting life into the shoots.

Daphne was asking when the wildflowers would be out. I said not for a couple weeks, but I promised to keep my eyes out if I saw anything. Sometimes the crocuses get an early start when they are in a sheltered sunny spot. Daphne’s becoming good friends with Annie. I notice she’s in the kitchen quite often talking. Her poor husband is stuck out the porch. Once his condition improves, I’ll pay him a visit and chat. He doesn’t seem to be in any shape for that now.

The War was weighing on us all. The news starting coming in that there was a big battle in France. The biggest battle yet with almost 30,000 Canadians. The newspapers would come in on the trains both from Ottawa and Toronto. They’d be delivered to the Highland Inn first and we’d get the used ones a day later. Shannon didn’t believe in paying for a newspaper subscription so our news was always a day late.

I painted another snow scene. Snow banks thawing on the north side of hill. It was one of those drifts that blows over the hill. It wasn’t a particularly inspiring sketch, but I enjoyed being outside watching the birds starting to arrive. Of course I could hear a woodpecker but I saw a few sparrows, a warbler and a robin. The barn swallows should arriving soon to nest in the stable.

When it’s warmer, I’ll take Daphne out to find some wildflowers.

“Pictures by Sydenham Boy Worth Seeing”, The Owen Sound Sun, Apr. 10, 1917

Mr. Tom Thomson’s Pictures Show Decided Talent of Promising Artist

In every report concerning pictures exhibited by Ontario’s artists in Toronto for the past few years there has been a paragraph or sentence which, without exception, was one of praise for the pictures shown by Mr. Tom Thomson. He has been spoken of by the highest art critics as a young artist who is on the threshold of an exceptionally brilliant career, and any work he shows always receives marked praise.

Mr. Thomson’s success is of interest to Owen Sounders, for his parents reside on Fourth Avenue East, and he himself is a Sydenham boy, having lived in Leith for many years. A member of The Sun staff had the pleasure, while in Toronto recently of paying a visit to Mr. Thomson’s winter studio in Rosedale, and the visit was all that was needed to convince one that Mr. Thomson is indeed an artist whose name will be much before the public in coming years.

Mr. Thomson’s paintings are almost entirely of nature. Only in a few instances does he introduce figures, and then not with great success. But his studies of landscapes, water, clouds and trees are wonderful, both for their faithful representation of the subjects and for the unusual and even marvellous color effects. Mr. Thomson has simply hundreds of sketches, not on canvas but on boards about 9 in. by 10 in. From these he makes the larger canvases, such as the ones the Dominion and Provincial Governments have bought from him for public buildings. Seen in the small studio these could not be appreciated but when hung in proper surroundings they would no doubt be admirable.

When the artist first begins to place his smaller pictures before one, one is apt to find them too full of color – for Mr. Thomson’s use of color is what makes his work notable. There are wonderful autumn scenes, the crimson and burnished golds of leaf and vine being transposed almost too faithfully, one is apt to say at first, to canvas. There are studies of wild flowers which are exquisite and ones of rocks and still and running water which are wonderfully attractive in their color and in their character. When one has seen forty or fifty of them, there is a change in the visitor’s appreciation. The color begins to grow on one. It is all true to nature, the kind of thing you look at in the field or forest and say, “See how brilliant that is. If it were transferred to canvas some would say that the artist exaggerated.” And though at first the brilliancy rather daunts one, before the end is reached the real art in the canvases becomes apparent and the duller canvases are tame.

There was one picture which the guide of the writer secured for his own. It was a study of a flat field, and two trees. One’s leaves were of a flat mahogany, beech red. The other was a flaming yellow – the yellow of a birch on a certain kind of soil. When we first saw this the yellow and red seemed to – well, scream to us. But when we looked at it for several minutes, the grace and living fires of the trees – hundreds of times had we seen them as vivid – began to dawn on us and before we went we knew the picture was a treasure.

Mr. Thomson’s studies are nearly all made in the North Country. There are a few from this vicinity, but he finds more of the abundant color he loves in the wilderness of the northern forests, and besides, the life he is able to live there – the simple life in every truth – appeals to him. Those who are interested in pictures would greatly enjoy a visit to Mr. Thomson’s studio, and there would be few who would come away without a great deal of praise for the work of the artist.