Thomson & Hill
David Roberts
It should be the name of a big law firm: Thomson and Hill. Or a very special blend of scotch whisky.
Oh, and have you noticed this little watercolour painting has a real Tom Thomson feel?
Because it somewhat rather is.
I made it using as reference a postcard edition of Thomson's Northern River that was given me years ago by the writer Lawrence Hill. (Larry was in town for a writing conference and I was on the executive committee of the Manitoba Writers Guild, chauffeuring him around).
Coincidentally Larry & I walked into The Winnipeg Free Press Carlton St. newsroom together as eager young news reporters on the very same day (early 80s) ... around 70 years after Thomson made the original painting.
Thank-you TT. And to LH for the inspiration & for giving me something to do.
Oh, and here's another little thing - when Hill & Roberts worked at the Freep it was owned by the original corporate incarnation of FP Newspapers which also published The Globe and Mail and The Vancouver Sun and which was part of a larger newspaper empire owned by Kenneth Thomson the 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet.
And while one famous Thomson was an art-maker and the other an art collector, as far as I know there is not any other connecton between the Canadian painter Tom Thomson and the Thomsons of Fleet other than, in the former, an ability for art-making and in the other, a great appreciation of, fine art.