Tom Thomson’s Smoke Lake, Algonquin Park is one of Thomson’s most important and charming early paintings. In it, he depicted pine trees beside a lake, their foliage in blocky shapes, growing close to a rocky shore, a clear day – not a cloud in the sky – and in the distance, a heavily treed shoreline with a few, a very few, of the remaining snowy areas since it is spring in Algonquin Park. Taken together, these motifs compose themselves into a sketch which is surprisingly successful, since besides being choice in itself, it provides certain clear affinities with The West Wind, the holy icon for many Canadians of their deepest selves, desires and dreams.Smoke Lake, Algonquin Park was painted in the spring of 1912, when Thomson arrived to sketch in the north woods. He painted it on paperboard (Birchmore board), the material he used then and favored [sic] for its portability and painting surface. He bought a number of these boards in Toronto, although they were made in London, England by various companies such as George Rowney & Co., and the size (approximately 7 x 10 inches) and material help date these works.

Thomson had travelled to Algonquin Park with a friend, Ben Jackson, and they camped at Canoe Lake among other places. They must have visited nearby Smoke Lake for the day and made a few sketches. This sketch shows a new confidence and power in Thomson’s work, as can be seen in his steady and controlled handling and clearly perceived spatial composition. To the trees and rocks and their shadows forming patterns on the hillside, Thomson applied a subtle colour configuration, employing closely related tones of brown, orange and green for the trees and foliage set off by shades of white for the remnants of snow and blue for the sky which is mixed with white where it meets the trees on the shore. The lighter accents on the tree trunks at left and on the rocks indicate the time of day, probably early morning. Despite the restrained combination of colours, Smoke Lake, Algonquin Park is a painting breathing Thomson’s happiness over the beauty he found in the forest world combined with, perhaps, a feeling of steely determination to achieve quality work to share with the staff of the place where he worked, Grip Ltd. in Toronto.

Working at Grip Ltd. he had been encouraged by the art director, Albert H. Robson and by other members of the art staff, such as the senior designer, the inspirational J.E.H. MacDonald, later a key member of the Group of Seven, to view landscape as a subject to be studied and acutely observed. Algonquin Park, which he chose as a place to be painted, was only established in 1893 so it was still in the news, was the ideal place since it provided an ever-changing balance between different forest types such as Thomson’s great subject, pines. Yet Smoke Lake, Algonquin Park is not a literal transcript of the scene before him but a fully realized depiction of light, rock, sky, space and trees.

The painting is among the first of many Thomson painted of the northern woods in spring, a subject which remained his preoccupation life-long. Traces of this sketch such as the blocky shapes to the foliage may be found in his major canvases on the subject, such as The West Wind, though in creating this painting, Thomson made changes consistent with his advancing practice. Thomson was adept at using details from this sketch, like other ones he had well-observed, in later work. Thomson did a number of works painted on canvas board in 1912 and 1913, and in a few cases, they were dated by Thomson himself or a relative.
This work was chosen for sale by G. Blair Laing, the dealer who handled Thomson’s work from the beginning, starting with sales in the late 1930s so he would have recognized the quality of this sketch. Thomson gave a related work, Pine Stump and Trees, to the brother of a close friend. It has a similar handling of the tree trunk and rocks but lacks the bright day Thomson chose to essay in Smoke Lake, Algonquin Park.

Among Thomson’s early work, this sketch beguiles as well as persuades, making us aware that Thomson knew his subject was important and memorable enough for a painting.

Written by Joan Murray