Silver Birches

Slender white birch trunks stand out sharply against a dusky forest in this small oil sketch by Tom Thomson, one of Canada's best-loved artists. Painted in 1915, the scene comes from Algonquin Park in Ontario, a wilderness Thomson visited over and over. The sky steals the show with its ribbons of glowing green and deep blue, giving the twilight an almost buzzing, otherworldly quality that pulls your eye right across the panel.

Thomson liked to work outside on little wooden boards, painting fast to catch a fleeting moment before the light shifted. Here his thick, energetic brushstrokes give the trees and undergrowth a rough, alive texture. He never joined the Group of Seven, but his approach shaped their work deeply, and his story took a tragic turn when he drowned on Canoe Lake in 1917 under circumstances that were never fully explained. His death at just 39 turned him into something of a Canadian legend.

Rather than aiming for a photo-real night, Thomson chose feeling over accuracy, drenching the woods in blues and unexpected greens. The effect is modest but memorable, a small and heartfelt glimpse of the northern forest he loved best.