THE STORY BEHIND THOMSON'S SKETCH

Tom Thomson prepared this board with a layer of lean, pale ochre paint. Perhaps in response to the weather, he glazed this bright under-layer with a thin, dark oil wash to produce a tone similar to the birch panels he would come to use more frequently the following year. The wash would have made the surface less absorbent, and was still wet at the time the sketch was made, which would have led to fast, fluid painting.

Thomson typically began sketches by setting the principal forms with a thin brush, usually starting with the most complex structural element of the composition, which clearly drew him. After roughing in the tree he would have then began to paint the swollen river, working from the far bank to near, before working up to the edges of the tree, with mostly horizontal brush strokes. Finally, he worked on the far bank and the sky before putting in the foreground and reworking the tree trunk and branches.