Tom Thomson was one of Canada's more famous painters. He was born in Claremont Ontario and in 1901 he went to a Seattle business school run by his brother, of all people. He studied art and worked in a
studio. By 1905, he was in Toronto where the action was. By 1908, he was working in the same studio with J.E.H. MacDonald, which is how he got hooked up with the men who would eventually form the Group of Seven. The other senior artists supported him
because they saw the diamond in the rough. In 1914, Thompson began sharing a studio with A.Y Jackson. Jackson helped him fix the problems with his paintings. He improved. Within three years of his trip up North, he produced enough quality work to become one
of Canada's best artists ever. His was a style that was a direct response by a genius to the Canadian North, with nothing European about it.
