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Northern River (painting)
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Northern River (painting)
Northern River is a 1914–15 oil painting by Canadian painter Tom Thomson. The work was inspired by a sketch completed over the same winter, possibly in Algonquin Park. The completed canvas is large, measuring 115.1 × 102.0 cm (455⁄16 × 403⁄16 in). Painted over the winter of 1914–15, it was completed in Thomson's shack behind the Studio Building in Toronto. The painting was produced as he was entering the peak of his short art career and is considered one of his most notable works. In 1915 it was purchased by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and has remained in the collection ever since.
Thomson first visited Algonquin Park in May 1912, venturing through the area on a canoe trip with his Grip colleague Ben Jackson. Thomson's transition from commercial art towards his original style of painting began to be apparent around this time. His early works, such as Northern Lake (1912–13) and Evening (1913), were not outstanding technically, yet they did illustrate an above average ability regarding composition and colour handling.
Northern River and the winter of 1914–15 stand as a point of transition in Thomson's art. In 1914 he made himself a sketch box to hold 8½ × 10½ inch (21.6 × 26.7 cm) panels, allowing him greater opportunity for sketching. A. Y. Jackson in particular taught him about the subtleties of composition, colour and technique in general, allowing the sketches that followed show a beginning desire to experiment with colour and texture rather than continue with the precision and subdued nature of his earlier works.
In a letter to James MacCallum, Thomson referred to Northern River as his "swamp picture." Though Thomson was typically critical of his own work, he described the painting as being "not half bad" to a nephew. David Milne, a Canadian artist and critic, praised the painting, writing in a letter,
Just plain impossible, but he has done it, it stirs you. Any painter who has ever worked on this overlying pattern motive will realize at once that this is tackling a complication beyond reason. A great point in Thomson's favour this, and his lack of perfection. I am wary of craftsmanship. It is nothing in itself, neither emotion nor creation. [...] I rather think it would have been wiser to have taken your ten most prominent Canadians and sunk them in Canoe Lake—and saved Tom Thomson.
In an article for Canadian Magazine, MacCallumm would write about the uniqueness of the painting amongst Thomson's entire catalogue. In particular, while Thomson would normally depict trees as amalgamated masses, in this painting he gives them each an individual form:
Drawing was to [Thomson] the expression of form, and form might be expressed by any method, so long as the form is true. One would have expected that with his intimate knowledge of trees he would have loved to paint all their traceries. In the “Northern River” alone did he lavish detail on his trees and here only because it helped the pattern. In one in whom the sense of design, of decoration was so developed that is the more striking, for in his sketches and in his larger pictures he always treated trees as masses. In his painting of them he gives form structure and colour by dragging paint in bold strokes over an underlying tone. Like many other painters he felt the limitations of paint, the impossibility of expressing on a flat surface the solidity and thickness of a tree, and in some canvasses almost modeled them in paint, while in others he got the same effect by expressing them by deep grooves in the paint.
The painting recalls elements of A. Y. Jackson's 1914 canvas, A Frozen Lake, which Thomson likely saw in November 1914 before Jackson took it in December to be exhibited. Both paintings share a motif of trees and thin, sinuous branches obscuring the view to a body of water. The directional emphasis of the image is placed in the vertical direction, especially apparent when contrasted with the later canvas, The Pool.
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Northern River (painting)
Northern River is a 1914–15 oil painting by Canadian painter Tom Thomson. The work was inspired by a sketch completed over the same winter, possibly in Algonquin Park. The completed canvas is large, measuring 115.1 × 102.0 cm (455⁄16 × 403⁄16 in). Painted over the winter of 1914–15, it was completed in Thomson's shack behind the Studio Building in Toronto. The painting was produced as he was entering the peak of his short art career and is considered one of his most notable works. In 1915 it was purchased by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and has remained in the collection ever since.
Thomson first visited Algonquin Park in May 1912, venturing through the area on a canoe trip with his Grip colleague Ben Jackson. Thomson's transition from commercial art towards his original style of painting began to be apparent around this time. His early works, such as Northern Lake (1912–13) and Evening (1913), were not outstanding technically, yet they did illustrate an above average ability regarding composition and colour handling.
Northern River and the winter of 1914–15 stand as a point of transition in Thomson's art. In 1914 he made himself a sketch box to hold 8½ × 10½ inch (21.6 × 26.7 cm) panels, allowing him greater opportunity for sketching. A. Y. Jackson in particular taught him about the subtleties of composition, colour and technique in general, allowing the sketches that followed show a beginning desire to experiment with colour and texture rather than continue with the precision and subdued nature of his earlier works.
In a letter to James MacCallum, Thomson referred to Northern River as his "swamp picture." Though Thomson was typically critical of his own work, he described the painting as being "not half bad" to a nephew. David Milne, a Canadian artist and critic, praised the painting, writing in a letter,
Just plain impossible, but he has done it, it stirs you. Any painter who has ever worked on this overlying pattern motive will realize at once that this is tackling a complication beyond reason. A great point in Thomson's favour this, and his lack of perfection. I am wary of craftsmanship. It is nothing in itself, neither emotion nor creation. [...] I rather think it would have been wiser to have taken your ten most prominent Canadians and sunk them in Canoe Lake—and saved Tom Thomson.
In an article for Canadian Magazine, MacCallumm would write about the uniqueness of the painting amongst Thomson's entire catalogue. In particular, while Thomson would normally depict trees as amalgamated masses, in this painting he gives them each an individual form:
Drawing was to [Thomson] the expression of form, and form might be expressed by any method, so long as the form is true. One would have expected that with his intimate knowledge of trees he would have loved to paint all their traceries. In the “Northern River” alone did he lavish detail on his trees and here only because it helped the pattern. In one in whom the sense of design, of decoration was so developed that is the more striking, for in his sketches and in his larger pictures he always treated trees as masses. In his painting of them he gives form structure and colour by dragging paint in bold strokes over an underlying tone. Like many other painters he felt the limitations of paint, the impossibility of expressing on a flat surface the solidity and thickness of a tree, and in some canvasses almost modeled them in paint, while in others he got the same effect by expressing them by deep grooves in the paint.
The painting recalls elements of A. Y. Jackson's 1914 canvas, A Frozen Lake, which Thomson likely saw in November 1914 before Jackson took it in December to be exhibited. Both paintings share a motif of trees and thin, sinuous branches obscuring the view to a body of water. The directional emphasis of the image is placed in the vertical direction, especially apparent when contrasted with the later canvas, The Pool.
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