An Inquiry into the Success of Tom Thomson's The West Wind

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Tom Thomson's The West Wind (figure 1), painted in 1916–17, is one of the most enduring images in the history of Canadian landscape painting, its position secured through frequent reproduction and a growing body of literature devoted to it (see Bordo; Teitelbaum; Linsley). Both The West Wind and The Jack Pine (figure 2), considered by many to be its companion piece, were among the last large canvases Thomson did before he drowned in Algonquin Park in July of 1917 at the age of thirty-nine. The task of documenting Thomson's work and assessing the significance of his legacy was begun soon after his death by his friends and colleagues, including those who went on to form the Group of Seven in 1920. During the 1920s, The West Wind was frequently singled out by writers who were engaged with the powerful cultural and nationalist arguments of the day. Both the painting itself and the motif on which it is based — a lone pine seen against the waters and distant hills of a northern Ontario lake — were appropriated into the Group of Seven's `cult of the patriotic landscape,' which sought to link national cultural identity to a specific topography. The most succinct and eloquent statement of the seminal role assigned to The West Wind during this period of cultural nationalism came from Arthur Lismer, who in 1934 called it `the spirit of Canada made manifest in a picture' (Lismer, `The West Wind,' 163).