Tom Thomson's mandolin
Beneath separate protective plexiglass cubes, in the climate controlled confines of a public art gallery in the small city of Owen Sound, Ontario, sit two amazing antiques, each replete with history. One is the painter's palate of Tom Thomson. The other is his mandolin. And while one still sings its stories loud and long, the other is forever silent.
Ironically, it's the palate whose notes still ring out across time and distance. Just a quick glance around the room reveals several dozen of the paintings that sprang from its colour-crusted surface not so long ago. In their shades and shadows the landscape that Thomson captured with his brush still echoes, a muted chord that hangs like a haze in the air. The forms of the black spruce trees, the ripples of moonlit waves, the organic meander of a springtime stream still form a chorus together that sings of life, of the land, and of the swift hand of the man who touched and sang it all. That quiet palate still reverberates with the notes that Thomson once coaxed from its humble wooden frame.
Not so, the ancient mandolin. This unusual instrument (triple, rather than double-strung) is as silent as can be. History records that Thomson loved to play music. But where are the tunes he strummed now? The mandolin was heavily restored - one can only imagine what an artist, a woodsman, a fisherman, a canoeist put this fragile instrument through in its time. But no amount of restoration will make it play his tunes again.
Did Thomson pick out the reels of his ancestral home in Scotland? Did he hum along with ancient Gypsy melodies? Did he learn the shanties of the lumbermen whose woods he shared, and strum them into life? Perhaps he learned the popular tunes of the day by lantern-light in his little canvas tent, camped on the edge of nowhere with only music for company.
A little research might shed some light on the bare facts of the matter. His life is, after all, a matter of public record. But if the facts can help illustrate the story, they will never bring lost songs to life.
We know Tom Thomson as a painter, one of the greatest ever to paint this land. What songs did the painter sing? Did he love to stroke the strings as he loved to wield the brush? Did he grace the night with sad, sweet odes to the heart of the vast wild north?
Only a lonely mandolin knows for sure, and under a clear, hard modern sky, that mandolin is forever silent and still.
Ironically, it's the palate whose notes still ring out across time and distance. Just a quick glance around the room reveals several dozen of the paintings that sprang from its colour-crusted surface not so long ago. In their shades and shadows the landscape that Thomson captured with his brush still echoes, a muted chord that hangs like a haze in the air. The forms of the black spruce trees, the ripples of moonlit waves, the organic meander of a springtime stream still form a chorus together that sings of life, of the land, and of the swift hand of the man who touched and sang it all. That quiet palate still reverberates with the notes that Thomson once coaxed from its humble wooden frame.
Not so, the ancient mandolin. This unusual instrument (triple, rather than double-strung) is as silent as can be. History records that Thomson loved to play music. But where are the tunes he strummed now? The mandolin was heavily restored - one can only imagine what an artist, a woodsman, a fisherman, a canoeist put this fragile instrument through in its time. But no amount of restoration will make it play his tunes again.
Did Thomson pick out the reels of his ancestral home in Scotland? Did he hum along with ancient Gypsy melodies? Did he learn the shanties of the lumbermen whose woods he shared, and strum them into life? Perhaps he learned the popular tunes of the day by lantern-light in his little canvas tent, camped on the edge of nowhere with only music for company.
A little research might shed some light on the bare facts of the matter. His life is, after all, a matter of public record. But if the facts can help illustrate the story, they will never bring lost songs to life.
We know Tom Thomson as a painter, one of the greatest ever to paint this land. What songs did the painter sing? Did he love to stroke the strings as he loved to wield the brush? Did he grace the night with sad, sweet odes to the heart of the vast wild north?
Only a lonely mandolin knows for sure, and under a clear, hard modern sky, that mandolin is forever silent and still.
Labels: mandolin, Ontario, painter, palette, silence, Tom Thomson
posted by David Newland at 24.2.04
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