PROVENANCE
Mrs. Plewis, Allandale
Howard Plewis (brother to Mrs. Plewis), Toronto
Important Canadian Art, Sotheby's Canada, November 10, 1987, lot 232
Libby's of Toronto, 1988
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
This work is included in the Tom Thomson catalogue raisonné, researched and written by Joan Murray, as catalogue #1905.02 https://www.tomthomsoncatalogue.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=15

This fascinating early work by Tom Thomson speaks to his iconic later works in multiple ways. Firstly, the style shows Thomson emerging from a gentle, even quaint British watercolour tradition, with a touch of domesticity present in the well-kept shoreline fence. A nascent element of the dynamism of his later oil sketches can be sensed, however, in the impressionist rendering of the jostling trees and quiet stream. His compositional choice of including both the near and far shore of the stream contains an element of foreshadowing, however unintentional: one of Thomson’s first major canvases – and the first painting he ever sold – Northern Lake (Tom Thomson catalogue raisonné 1912-1913.01, now in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario) makes use of this same motif. It would become a key element of Thomson’s imagery throughout his brief final period during which his most celebrated works were produced. The date of this work, too, is key. After a brief sojourn in the United States with his brother George, Thomson had returned to Ontario 1905. By the following year had set himself on the path to becoming a professional artist, and, with one brief decade, a poet of the North.

The catalogue raisonné notes: Thomson, who was a boarder with Mrs. Plewis in 1911, gave this watercolour to Mrs. Plewis. It is believed to have been painted in the Claremont area.

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