Tom Thomson

The Silence and the Storm

A stunning new edition of the Canadian classic with never-before-seen paintings

First published in 1977 to commemorate the centenary of the birth of a Canadian painter whose brief, brilliant life, and untimely death in a mysterious canoe accident, gained him mythic status in his homeland, Tom Thomson: The Silence and the Storm quickly attained legendary status in its own right. This newly designed and expanded edition revives a classic and adds more than 25 never-before-seen paintings and a new introduction. Co-authors Harold Town, a founder of the Painters Eleven and an icon of Canadian art himself, and art historian David P. Silcox, former head of Sotheby's Canadian division, celebrate this early associate of the Group of Seven as a key creative figure without falling into the trap of cultural jingoism. Thomson, the authors maintain, was an inspired regional painter—in the best sense of that term—who stumbled upon the bold Expressionist palette pioneered by Matisse and his contemporaries despite working from a provincial backwater.

Thomson's finest works are reproduced here in painstakingly colour-matched plates, including more than 80 of Thomson's famous oil sketches in exactly their original size.