Tom Thomson

Biography

(1877-1917) Tom Thomson, the great painter of Northern Ontario landscapes, was one of the catalyzing forces behind the formation of the Group of Seven - an association not formally created until three years after Thomson's death. He was born in Claremont, Ontario on August 5, 1877. He worked as a commercial artist in Seattle and in Toronto until 1913 when he left Rous & Mann to become a full-time painter and spend as much time as possible in Algonquin Park.

Thomson did not live to see the success of his vision. On July 8, 1917, his canoe was found capsized in Algonquin Park. His body was discovered eight days later. He was forty years old and at the height of his powers as a painter. The cause of death is now, as it was then, an unsolved mystery.