Tom Thomson (North Star)

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.