Tom Thomson

Tom Thomson is the undisputed master of the oil sketch. A towering figure in the history of Canadian art after just five years of professional practise, he stunned audiences with his fresh and avant-garde experimentation, evoking his experience of the Ontario landscape in dozens of dazzling miniature masterworks.

Thomson’s death in 1917 triggered the formation of the Group of Seven and the ascendancy of landscape painting as a national preoccupation. Tom Thomson: North Star is the first book to focus on Thomson’s small-scale sketches and brings together a variety of voices to interpret his legacy with fresh eyes. Among them are the McMichael’s Executive Director Ian A.C. Dejardin, historian Douglas Hunter, and Algonquin knowledge-keeper and cultural activist Christine McRae Luckasavitch, as well as a number of contemporary Canadian artists from all parts of Canada. The essays in combination with more than 150 reproductions of Thomson’s painted sketches cast new light on the enduring influence of one of Canada’s most iconic artists.