October

Painted in 1916, this autumn woodland by Tom Thomson pulls us into a thicket of pale birch and aspen trunks leaning at odd angles across the canvas. The forest floor glows with red and orange, while scattered golden leaves and bare branches hint that winter is not far off. Thomson mixed his colors thickly, letting each brushstroke stand out, so the whole scene feels alive with the cool, sharp energy of an October day in Ontario's Algonquin Park, the wild place he loved best.

Thomson liked to work outside on small wooden panels, moving fast to capture the light and color before they shifted. That quick, hands-on approach gives paintings like this one a raw and honest quality, with crooked trees and little gaps of bright blue sky poking through the branches. His bold way of seeing the Canadian landscape later sparked the Group of Seven, a famous circle of painters who followed his lead. Thomson himself did not live to see their success, as he drowned in a mysterious canoeing accident in 1917, only a year after finishing this piece.