Tom Thomson was an influential Canadian artist best known for his thickly painted landscapes of the Canadian wilderness. Focused primarily on color relationships and expressive paint handling, Thomson’s work as seen in the piece The West Wind (1917), evokes the mood of artists like Vincent van Gogh. Notably, his larger works were often composed in the studio from plein-air studies he made in the environs of Ontario’s Algonquin Park. Born on August 5, 1877 in Claremont, Canada, Thomson's early life included an apprenticeship at an iron foundry and a brief stint as a fire ranger in Algonquin Park. Later, while working as a graphic designer at the Toronto-based design firm Grip Ltd., his work began to take on the qualities for which...