Tom Thompson’s Northern River - Location Discovered

Back in the fall of 2016 John and Paula Gardner stopped at this site as shown above in the west end of Algonquin Park. It looked like a good spot to do a plein air oil painting of the view looking North across the Oxtongue river. After standing for a few minutes the whole view became strangely familiar to John. For around 100 years historians and researchers of TT and the Group of Seven could not find where Thomson got his ideas for this painting shown on the left. They had been looking for a swamp based on TT comments about his” swamp picture” being “not half bad. What they failed to realize, was that the dominant tree now known as black spruce in the painting was likely called “swamp spruce” in the days when the painting was done and named. Back then, when TT did the painting the river he was looking at was called the “North River” (1893 map). Read the whole story at www.inthemomentarts.com

John has had several researchers and interested TT followers confirm these findings and now agree on the validity of the hypothesis that this site is the inspiration for one of the most iconic landscape paintings ever done by a Canadian artist. Jim and Sue Waddington authors of “In the footsteps of the Group of Seven” now believe this site is what inspired Thomson.