Tom Thomson Tom Thomson

Tom Thomson

Design for a Canadian Hero

    • $9.99
    • $9.99

Publisher Description

This is an intimate biography of an artist who became a legend after his death, but who in his private life stands revealed as a troubled man who was, in many ways, his own victim.

Joan Murray’s new biography is part detective work, too: she investigates his beliefs, and the origins of his great masterpieces, and provides a convincing description of the possible circumstances of his death.

The art of Tom Thomson represents one of the high points of Canadian modernism, which flourished in the first two decades of this century. During his brief career, lasting just five years, Thomson evolved a highly intense, naturalistic style, introducing formal innovations and challenging the idiom of the tonal landscape of painters popular in his day. Thomson’s idiosyncratic expressionist landscape art reflected the intellectual and psychological climate of pre-World War I Canada. It developed against the complex cultural background that produced the poets Bliss Carmen and Duncan Campbell Scott and, later, the painters of the Group of Seven.

Despite his short creative life, and only half a decade of mature artistic activity, Thomson, a superb designer, produced an extensive body of work - more than thirty canvases and three hundred oil sketches - in a remarkably personal style, characterized by unusual colour combinations and strong patterns. Through it he conveyed the existential dimension of nature, making Algonquin Park - its trees, waters, and winds - the principal subject of his work.

GENRE
Arts & Entertainment
RELEASED
1998
October 1
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
168
Pages
PUBLISHER
Dundurn Press
SELLER
Dundurn Press Limited
SIZE
5.8
MB
Norman Rockwell Norman Rockwell
2001
Ben Shahn: An Artist's Life Ben Shahn: An Artist's Life
2014
The Who, the What, and the When The Who, the What, and the When
2014
Graham Ibbeson, The People's Sculptor Graham Ibbeson, The People's Sculptor
2012
Colorado Artist Jack Roberts Colorado Artist Jack Roberts
2015
Michigan Literary Luminaries Michigan Literary Luminaries
2015
Drafts, Fragments, and Poems Drafts, Fragments, and Poems
2018
Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century
1999
Harley, the Therapy Dog Harley, the Therapy Dog
2023
Confessions of a Curator Confessions of a Curator
1996