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Michelle Wilson; © McMichael Canadian Art Collection

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Medium: Ink »
Support: on paper »
Year(s): 1908 »
1908.06
Decorative Landscape: Quotation from Maurice Maeterlinck
c.1908
Ink on paper
12 13/16 x 7 11/16 in. (32.6 x 19.5 cm)
Inscription recto: under curled up ends of scroll, T T; l.r.q., IT IS WELL TO / HAVE VISIONS / OF A BETTER / LIFE THAN THAT OF / EVERY DAY, BUT IT IS THE LIFE OF EVERY / DAY FROM WHICH / ELEMENTS OF A BET- / TER LIFE MUST COME / MAETERLINCK

Inscription verso: on the cardboard backing, in ink, In possession of / Margaret Thomson Tweedale / Tom Thomson's pen and ink / sketch which he gave to his / mother and father for a / Christmas gift; in graphite, Pen and ink sketch by Tom Thomson. Property of TT Estate; u.c., label, AGO 1971
Exhibition History
McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario, Canada, Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven, October 2, 2010–January 30, 2011.
Published References
Murray, Joan. The Art of Tom Thomson. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1971. Exhibition catalogue, p. 17 (repr.)
Town, Harold, and David P. Silcox. Tom Thomson: The Silence and the Storm. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977, pp. 57, 233 (repr.)
Murray, Joan. Northern Lights: Masterpieces of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven. Toronto: Key Porter Books Limited, 1994, p. 35 (repr.)
Reid, Dennis and Charles C. Hill. Tom Thomson. Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre with the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada, 2002. Exhibition catalogue, p. 54 (repr.)
King, Ross. Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven. Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 2011, p. 165.
Remarks

In creating this work, Thomson may have looked at illustrations such as Dora Greenwell McChesney’s “A Throw of the Dice,” Evening News [Toronto], 1 March 1902.

Record last updated March 9, 2016. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Murray, Joan. ""Decorative Landscape: Quotation from Maurice Maeterlinck, c.1908 (1908.06)." In Tom Thomson Catalogue Raisonné. www.tomthomsoncatalogue.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=50 (accessed on May 6, 2024).