Tom Thomson
The West Wind
1917
Painted in 1917 shortly before his mysterious death on Canoe Lake, Tom Thomson's 'The West Wind' shows a single jack pine bent by the wind on the shore of an Algonquin Park lake in Ontario. The rugged silhouette of the tree against the grey-blue lake became, after Thomson's death, the defining image of a distinctly Canadian landscape painting championed by the Group of Seven. Today held by the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, it is arguably the most recognisable Canadian painting of the 20th century and an enduring emblem of the country's identification with its northern woods.
Exhibition Venue
Image source: Wikimedia Commons