Thomas John Thomson (August 5, 1877 – July 8, 1917) was an influential Canadian artist of the early 20th century.
He directly influenced a group of painters that would come to be known as the Group of Seven, and is sometimes incorrectly credited as being a member of the group itself. Thomson died under mysterious circumstances, which added to his mystique.
Tom Thomson was born near Claremont, Ontario and grew up in Leith, near Owen Sound. In 1899, he entered a machine shop apprenticeship at a foundry owned by William Kennedy, a close friend of his father. He was fired from his apprenticeship by a foreman who complained of Thomson's habitual tardiness.
In 1899 he volunteered to fight in the Second Boer War. In 1901, he enrolled in a business college in Chatham and dropped out eight months later to follow his older brother, George Thomson, who was operating a business school in Seattle, Washington. There he met and had a brief summer romance with Alice Elinor Lambert.
Thomson disappeared during a canoeing trip on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park on July 8, 1917, and his body was discovered in the lake eight days later. The official cause of death was accidental drowning, but there are still questions about how he actually died. - wikipedia
