The West Wind (painting)
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| The West Wind | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Tom Thomson |
| Year | 1917 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 120.7 cm × 137.2 cm (47.5 in × 54.0 in) |
| Location | Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto |
The West Wind is a 1917 painting by Canadian artist Tom Thomson. An iconic image, the pine tree at its centre has been described as growing "in the national ethos as our one and only tree in a country of trees".[1] It was painted in the last year of Thomson's life and was one of his final works on canvas. The painting, and a sketch for the painting, are displayed at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Thomson based The West Wind on an earlier, slightly different sketch he produced in 1916 while working as a park ranger in Algonquin Park.[2] In the finished canvas Thomson moved the pine further to the right, replaced a less defined foreground plane with strongly patterned rock shapes, and removed a dead tree limb from the ground.[1] The location of the subject is uncertain; Thomson's friend Winifred Trainor believed the site represented was Cedar Lake, though Grand Lake, Algonquin Park has also been proposed as the setting.[3]
As in his iconic The Jack Pine, Thomson began the painting with an undercoat of vermilion that he allowed to show through in various places to contrast with the greens, to lend the work a feeling of "vibration" and movement.[4] The pine dominates the composition without obscuring the view into the distance, and is successful as both specific representation and abstract design.[1]
Though not imposing in scale, it is a graceful arabesque decoration, "a magnified bonsai".[1] Thomson's background in design lent his composition an Art Nouveau sensibility, for example, "in the way a single tree stands silhouetted against water or the sky like a symbol of romantic solitude".[5] An earlier reviewer noticed the same effect in it and The Jack Pine: "[these] two best-known canvases... are essentially Art Nouveau designs in the flat, the principal motif in each case being a tree drawn in great sinuous curves... Such pictures, are, however, saved from complete stylization by the use of uncompromisingly native subject-matter and of Canadian colours, the glowing colours of autumn."[6]
The title of The West Wind is possibly a reference to the 1819 Percy Bysshe Shelley poem, Ode to the West Wind, especially possible given Thomson's love of poetry,[7] though Thomson's later canvases are typically believed to have only been titled after his death.[8][9]
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